October, 1917 Number 151 

THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
RECORD 



Extension Series no. 25 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Gitizemship 


PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 
Entered as Second-class Matter at the Postoffice at 
CHAPEL HILL, N. 0. 








The University of North Carolina 


Maximum Service to the People of the State 

A. THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS. 

B. THE SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE. 

(1) Chemical Engineering. 

(2) Electrical Engineering, 

(3) Civil and Road Engineering. 

(4) Soil Investigation. 

C. THE GRADUATE SCHOOL. 

D. THE SCHOOL OF LAW. 

E. THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE. 

F. THE SCHOOL OF PHARMACY. 

G. THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION. 

H. THE SUMMER SCHOOL. 

L THE BUREAU OF EXTENSION. 

(1) General Information. 

(2) Instruction by Lectures. 

(3) Correspondence Study Courses. 

(4) Debate and Declamation. 

(5) County Economic and Social Surveys. 

(6) Municipal and Legislative Reference. 

(7) Educational Information and Assistance. 

(8) Information Concerning the War. 


WRITE TO THE UNIVERSITY WHEN YOU 
NEED HELP 


For Information Regarding the University, Address 

THOMAS J. WILSON, Jr n Registrar. 








2 ffi 


THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
RECORD 


OCTOBER, 1917 
NUMBER 151 



LOCAL STUDY-CLUBS: 

ESSAYS AT CITIZENSHIP 

Faculty Committee on Extension 

Louis R. Wilson M. C. S. Noble Collier Cobb E. C. Branson 
W. Chase L. A. Williams E. R. Rankin A. H. Patterson 
W. Walker M. H. Stacy C. L. Raper Edwin Greenlaw 



RALEIGH 

Edwards & Broughton Printing Company 
1917 







The Bureau of Extension of the University 

of North Carolina 


The University of North Carolina through its Bureau of Extension 
offers to the people of the State: 

I. General Information: 

Concerning books, readings, essays, study outlines, and subjects 
of general interest. Literature will be loaned from the 
Library upon the payment of transportation charges each way. 

II. Instruction by Lectures: 

Lectures of a popular or a technical nature and addresses for com¬ 
mencement or other special occasions will be furnished any 
community which will pay the traveling expenses of the 
lecturer. 

III. Correspondence Courses: 

For teachers in Algebra, Arithmetic, Civics, Drawing, Eco¬ 
nomics, Education, Engineering, English, European History, 
French, Geology, German, Greek, Latin, North Carolina His¬ 
tory, Rural Economics, Solid Geometry, and United States 
History. 

IV. Guidance in Debate and Declamation : 

Through the High School Debating Union, special bulletins and 
handbooks, and material loaned from the Library. 

V. County Economic and Social Surveys: 

For use by counties in their effort to improve their economic 
and social condition. 

VI. Municipal Reference Aids: 

For use in studying and drafting municipal legislation. 

VII. Educational Information and Assistance: 

For teachers, principals, superintendents, school committees and 
boards. The School of Education acts as a clearing house for 
information concerning all phases of educational work and 
conducts a teacher’s bureau as an aid to communities and 
schools in securing efficient teachers. 

VIII. Information Concerning the War: 

Making clear the aims, purposes, and ideals of America in the 
war, for the use of newspapers, publicists, teachers, and the 
general public. 

For full information, address 

THE BUREAU OF EXTENSION, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 


D« of D. 

FEB 13 1910 


♦ • t 



LOCAL STUDY-CLUBS: 
ESSAYS AT CITIZENSHIP 


THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP 


Eacli citizen is bound to see that he exercises his poUtical privi¬ 
leges, whatever they are, with a view to the improvement of 
national ideals and their more complete realization, and not 
merely for the promotion of his separate interests. 

Those who are indifferent to the good of the community in 
which they live are neglectful of their own duties, and guilty of 
criminal carelessness, since they leave public concerns to be the 
prey of the unscrupulous. 

There are many temptations to selfishness in using any power 
or privilege, and plausible excuses can always be alleged for 
shirking responsibility; but those who habitually bring a faith, 
either in Humanity or in Christ, to bear on their daily conduct as 
citizens will be encouraged to hope for the realization of a distant 
ideal and ready to forego the prospect of personal reward. 

Archdeacon Cunningham of Ely, in Christianity and Economics. 


L’AVENIR EST MAGNIFIQUE 


After nearly a century of devastating wars which alternately 
glorified and then nearly ruined one European nation after an¬ 
other, Victor Hugo wrote to the young men and women of France 
that they should look for the glory of their country not in its 
past, but in its future; not in the exploits of war, but in the 
services of peace; not in what great generals had done, but in 
what remained for great privates to do. 

In successive stirring appeals he took as his text Pavenir est 
magnifique. Nor did he lose himself in rapturous dreaming 
about an inevitable future that was bound to come regardless of 
what young France might do. On the contrary, he sang of 
future glories which would come to France only if her young 
men and young women would seek their opportunity through the 
work that remained to be done. 

Today, in 1917, in the midst of time’s most devastating and least 
justifiable war, l’avenir est magnifique, the future is glorious, but 
that glory has its price and its conditions. It is not coming 
whether we want it or not. It is not being sent. Its star will not 
adjust itself in the heavens to the low and shifting gaze of selfish, 
short-sighted, unimaginative patriotism. On the contrary, the 
glory of our future is to be earned. It is coming only if we work 
hard enough, consistently enough, and intelligently enough to 
take ourselves and fellow-travelers to it. 

In making the world’s future magnificent, we must depend 
upon the character, talent, and technique of our privates. 

Preparing patriotism for the opportunities and duties that 
crowd behind the war clouds calls for a program of means and 
ways of universal training for citizenship and service. 

Patriotism must not stop with willingness to fight other nations 
or with enthusiasm for great celebrations. The patriotism of 
peace is even nobler than the patriotism of war. The patriotism 
which serves and builds is greater than the patriotism which 
hurts and destroys. If war patriotism must be trained, how much 
greater is the need for training peace patriotism! 

William H. Allen, in Universal Training for Citizenship and Public Service. 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Foreword ..:. 7 

1 Local Study-Clubs . 12 

2. The Vital Study of a County. 16 

3. Vitalizing School Activities. 20 

4. Home-State Studies at the University. 24 

5 Club-Studies in County Government. 33 

6. A Local Tax-List Study. 40 

7. Property Values and Taxes in Randolph. 49 

8. Our Fee and Salary Systems in Carolina. 53 

9. The Schools and the Nation-at-War: 

( a ) The Teacher’s Chance to Serve. 64 

(&) University War Lectures. 69 

(c) University War-Leaflets . 70 






















FOREWORD 


1. The roundabout and the forward look at the home-state and the 
home-county are phrases frequently on the lips of the North Carolina 
Club and the County Clubs at the University/ The ideas and ideals 
they embody have come to be fairly familiar to thoughtful people in 
almost every community of the state. Exactly what these campus 
phrases mean appears in definite detail in the work of these clubs and 
in the Club publications given to the public during the last three years: 
(1) in the Home-County Club-Study bulletin, (2) in the Study-Schedules 
and Year-Books of the North Carolina Club (two to date), (3) in Samp¬ 
son County: Economic and Social, (4) in Country-Life Institutes, 
(5) in Our Country Church Problems in Carolina, (6) in Our Carolina 
Highlanders, (7) in Wealth and Welfare in North Carolina, (8) in 
Twin-Born Social Menaces, (9) in The Town and Country Ends of Farm 
Prosperity in Forsyth, (10) in Pasquotank Today and Tomorrow, (11) 
in The Local Market Problems in Mecklenburg, (12) in Wake County 
Market Problems, (13) in The University Serves, and (14) in the 
weekly numbers of the University News Letter, which has now entered 
upon its fourth volume. 

Some of these publications are bulletins and circulars of the Bureau 
of Extension of the University; others are booklets published for free 
distribution by banks, merchants, boards of trade, and alumni associa¬ 
tions in Sampson County, Winston-Salem, Elizabeth City, Charlotte, 
and Greensboro; others are studies that have appeared in full in the 
Charlotte Observer, the Wilmington Star, the Raleigh Times, the High 
Point Enterprise, the Statesville Landmark, the Greensboro Christian 
A dvocate, the Biblical Recorder, and the Presbyterian Standard. 

We are bringing these titles together here merely to indicate to 
Local Study-Clubs, somewhat in definite detail, the puzzles and prob¬ 
lems that are worth threshing out in every community and in the state 
at large, to suggest study-schedules for local program committees, and 
to give cues about source materials, ways, means, and methods of work. 

The first Year-Book of the North Carolina Club will aid such com¬ 
mittees in arranging a series of studies in Local Resources, Advantages, 
Enterprises, Achievements, and Opportunities; the Second Year-Book 
will direct them into Local Sources of Primary Wealth, the Accumula¬ 
tion of Community Wealth and the Factors involved in Wealth Reten¬ 
tion, the Business Uses of Local Wealth—Farming, Merchandising, 
Banking, Manufacturing, and so on, and the Civic and Social Uses of 
Community Wealth—Taxation Problems and Organized Agencies of 
Public Welfare. 

The third-year program of the North Carolina Club (outlined in 
Chapter V of this bulletin) is concentrated upon County Government 



8 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


and County Affairs, and its twenty-six subjects will suggest local studies 
that are entirely proper and, it may be, very necessary in every county 
of the state. Three studies of this sort are given in this bulletin in 
chapters VI, VII, and VIII (A Typical Township Tax-List, A Randolph 
Tax Exhibit, and Our.Fee and Salary Systems), with the hope that 
they will lead to similar studies in a hundred counties and communi¬ 
ties of the state. 

The fourth-year program of the Club at the University will concern 
Municipal Affairs: (1) Government, (2) Boards of Trade, (3) Social 
Agencies, and (4) Town and Country Relationships. 

Here are matters that directly concern the sanity and safety of 
developing democracy in North Carolina, in our countryside, and in 
our industrial and urban centers alike. They are receiving the best 
attention that it is possible for an earnest group of young men at the 
University to give them year by year; and they are well worth the 
while of robust, able-bodied citizenship in every community of the state. 
Or so we have come to feel. 

2. Manifestly there is contagion in the vision and the spirit of these 
young students in the North Carolina Club and the affiliated County 
Clubs at the University. The organization of similar clubs for the 
direct and intensive study of local affairs was suggested by Mr. R. D. W. 
Connor, our state historian, in Raleigh some months ago, and since 
that time inquiries and suggestions of similar sort have come to us 
from a score or more of other devoted citizens of the state. This 
bulletin is the result of what we have come to believe is a widespread 
interest in North Carolina in Home-State and Home-County Clubs. 

Our experience with such clubs on the campus here prompts a prefa¬ 
tory word about Local Study-Clubs in the state at large: 

These Clubs are organized efforts to discover, interpret, and direct 
the forces, agencies, and institutions that fatefully have made com¬ 
munities and countries, states and nations in the past, and that are 
today writing the stories of their future. The forces at play in any 
social group, however small, are exactly the forces that are at play in 
the world at large. Every community is the world writ small, and the 
world is any community writ large—as President Wilson recently said. 
Every trait of human nature anywhere manifest on earth is present in 
every little social area. Every clique and coterie of souls is an epitome 
of humanity entire, in some one or another stage of development. The 
macrocosm is made up of infinite microcosms, all of a sort, for human 
nature is very much akin, quite as Josh Billings says. Every village 
is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is 
the world, says Emerson; and he adds, “I have no expectation that 
any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a 
remote age by men whose names have resounded far has any deeper 
sense than what he is doing today.” 




University of North Carolina 


9 


But direct, first-hand studies of life are baffling because they are 
studies of the ubiquitous and the obvious. What we see and bear all 
the time we soon cease to see and hear at all. We cannot hear the hall 
clock tick at times, for all our trying, until we open the clock face 
and see the pendulum swing. We miss the loveliness of familiar land¬ 
scapes until we see them painted, as Browning reminds us—until they 
challenge attention afresh, in new forms. Repetition deadens con¬ 
sciousness; familiarity breeds fondness or contempt, but it effaces in¬ 
terest and diminishes understanding. 

Pope well understood this primary fact of life when he said: 

Know thyself; presume not God to scan: 

The proper study of mankind is man. 

It is a proper but a difficult task for the individual man, who sees 
himself as in a glass darkly because he stands face to face with himself 
every minute of the day and night. And it is a still harder task for a 
community to be acutely self-conscious, because it is a collective per¬ 
sonality with feeble instincts of self-preservation and progress. 

The forces and influences that are making or marring communities 
and countries are nearer to them than breathing and closer than hands 
and feet. They are utterly commonplace, they are trifles light as air, 
and they are unconsidered because they cannot somehow get distinctly 
focused in the field of attention. It is far easier to study the distant 
stars with a telescope than to study with the naked eye the things that 
are under our very noses. Eyes that see not and ears that hear not are 
just ordinary eyes and ears. 

Every once in a while somebody looks straight at life with the seeing 
eye; Jacques Novicow, for instance, who spells out social solidarity in 
the utterly simple terms of association, and exchange of goods, services 
and sacrifices among individuals, classes, and countries, and social 
decay in terms of individualism, social estrangement, and conflict; or 
Selma Lagerlof, who discovers and discloses the very soul of a people 
as it appears in the familiar commonplaces of the life they live; or 
Shakespere, who holds the mirror up to nature in Elizabethan times, 
and for all time. 

3. The seeing eye is rare because commonly it has lacked an object, 
a motive, and a method. Little Local Study-Clubs can multiply the 
number of seeing eyes by supplying (1) an object—the life that a com¬ 
munity lives, (2) a motive—community progress and prosperity, wel¬ 
fare and well-being, and (3) a method—the direct examination of com¬ 
munity institutions and agencies as they are and as they might be, of 
community conditions, causes and consequences, community tendencies, 
drifts and movements set over against the larger life of the state, the 
nation, and the big wide world. 


10 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


The ordinary eye sees the farms and homes, the barns and businesses, 
the schools and churches that are; the seeing eye glimpses the enter¬ 
prises and altars that may be. The business eye discovers opportuni¬ 
ties that promise personal gain on the one hand and community liveli¬ 
hood on the other. The merciful eye fixes upon social ills and possible 
agencies of prevention and cure. The just eye sees defects in economic 
and civic codes, standards, and practices, and looks hopefully forward 
to the reign of righteousness that alone exalts a people. The literary 
eye sees large meanings in little things, discovers vital significance 
in the familiar commonplaces of the home community, and fashions 
rich designs of common wools stained with homemade dyes, as Persian 
rug weavers do. 

Herein lies the lasting glory of Fielding and Richardson, Jane Austin, 
Fanny Burney, and Elizabeth Gaspell, of Mary Wilkins, Margaret De¬ 
land, and Mary Antin, of Turganev, Dostoievski, and Gorky, of Helevy 
and Balzac, of Martin Anderson Nexo and Rudyard Kipling, of Ernest 
Poole and Abraham Cohan, of Henri Barbusse and Donald Hankey. 
Each one of them immortalized the life he best knew. The power to 
see and see clearly to the bottom of things familiar, to say simply and 
exactly what is seen, and to charm and stimulate imagination and will 
with the grace of unaffected fondness is the power they had; and it is 
the power we need in every community of the state and the nation. 

The sheep eats grass, but he grows wool on his back; the caterpillar 
eats mulberry leaves, but he spins silk, said Montaigne. The stuff out 
of which native literature must be wrought is as commonplace as grass 
and mulberry leaves. Grass and mulberry leaves abound everywhere; 
but not wool and silk. It may be that we lack organic expression as a 
people because we lack organic interest in the things that daily feed 
our bodies and our spirits. 

The poet eye in fine phrenzy rolling is far commoner than the seeing 
eye that pierces the quick of things in the life that lies about it. One 
Milton is enough for the race in any thousand years, but no people can 
ever have enough of the benediction that lies in the seeing eye and 
loving pen of a Lagerlof. 

Timrod found his “Southern summer snow” in a common cotton 
field. John Charles McNeill found his Cotton Land Lyrics in horsemint. 
bluebells, goldenrod and maypops, in dogwood blooms, cedar birds and 
berries, in possums and ’taters and ’lasses, in rabbit gums, cornshuck- 
ing and catfishing, in our common fireside ways, and the common need 
of laughter, love, and labor—in every homely thing in our homespun 
life: and they will live on and on in Carolina as long as human nature 
lasts. They are lasting literary fabrics, wrought as silkworms spin- 
in artless, organic way—the only way a native literature ever comes 
into being. 




University of North Carolina 


11 


Every community needs the observant eye, the interpretative eye, 
the prophetic eye, the eye practical and the eye poetic—the eye bent 
upon the commonplace things in our developing democracy and the 
eye that visions the tabernacles that may he built of them for the 
ampler life of our bodies and our souls; not the eye of Captain Jack 
Bunsby that always seemed, says Dickens, to be on the lookout for 
something in the extremest distance and to have no ocular knowledge 
of anything within ten miles, but the eye of Seebohm Rowndtree turned 
with penetrating concern upon York and Yorkshire, his home 
town and county, the eye of Archibald D. Murphey spying out the re¬ 
sources and necessities of the state a hundred years ago, and the eye 
of Lo>cal Study-Clubs in North Carolina hunting down obstacles, and 
devising ways and means of progress in every right direction in the 
beloved mother state today. 

We need an immense multiplication of seeing eyes in North Carolina, 
and we are fain to believe that they can be discovered and developed 
in adequate number by such Local Study-Clubs as Mr. Connor pro¬ 
poses.—E. C. Branson, Editor, Department of Rural Economics and 
Sociology. 


I 


LOCAL STUDY-CLUBS: ESSAYS AT CITIZENSHIP 

The Suggestion 

“There ought to be in every community of the state a little group of 
thoughtful people hunched up for the study of local affairs—economic, 
social, and civic—of local resources, activities, advantages, and oppor¬ 
tunities, of local conditions affecting life and business, of local town 
and county government, of local wealth and welfare, progress and 
prosperity, material and spiritual, along with big world-problems and 
the relations of the community to the larger life of the race; little local 
study-clubs with programs, purposes, plans, and methods of a sort with 
those of our boys in the North Carolina Club at the University,” said 
Mr. R. D. W. Connor, our state historian, a devoted alumnus and trustee 
of the University, in Raleigh some time ago. 

A similar suggestion has come from a score or more of the 352 alert, 
generous people of the state whom tie North Carolina Club has come 
to know during its three years of concentrated work upon the home 
state, and upon whom it steadily relies for information, counsel, and 
advice. 

We have wondered, by the way, whether or not these public-spirited 
men and women would like to be honorary members of the North Caro¬ 
lina Club. The Club at the University would feel greatly honored to 
have an affiliated membership of this sort representing every county 
and community in the state. These are the people who have come to be 
directly and actively interested in the purposes and details of Club 
work here; who in many instances are eager to see Local Study-Clubs 
organized for similar work in their home communities; who believe 
that clubs of this sort are worth-while essays at effective citizenship 
in free democracies. 

The Idea In Detail 

The method of organization and the plans of work are simple. A 
notice could be given to the public of a meeting to organize a Raleigh 
or a Haywood or a Perquimans study-club—a club to study Raleigh, 
Haywood, or Perquimans—what the city or county now is and what it 
might be; the purposes and plans could be discussed, an organization 
effected, and a program committee appointed. This committee could 
offer at a subsequent meeting a definite program for ten or twelve meet¬ 
ings during the year—a program covering local economic or social or 
civic concerns, just as the need may be most urgent here or there. The 



13 


University of North Carolina 

subjects to be investigated and reported upon could be parceled out at 
the start to volunteers, or to conscripts if need be. The details of the 
year’s study ought to be marked up for definite dates so as to give each 
student ample time to cover his subject competently and to lead effec¬ 
tively in the discussion that follows. The free open discussion is just 
as important as the research work and the address. Each event in the 
run of the year could be a smoker, or a two-bit supper after the fashion 
of the Current Topics Club of Rocky Mount. A main matter is to organ¬ 
ize around a plan and purpose definitely related to community condi¬ 
tions and needs, to community progress in every right direction, and 
to community prosperity of the sort that satisfies soul as well as sense. 

The Clientele 

These Local Study-Clubs would bring together at stated intervals in 
democratic fashion the men of every occupation and profession who are 
genuinely and generously interested in the community in which they 
live. The people who are attracted into such a club and who will have 
an abiding interest in it will be relatively few everywhere; because 
most of us are—quite unconsciously—private-minded persons, preoccu¬ 
pied and absorbed by private affairs mainly, and little concerned about 
community conditions and necessities. The good men who are poor 
citizens are a majority everywhere. 

But there is in every community a small group of people, both men 
and women, who are social- or civic-minded persons, who are, as we 
have said, genuinely and generously interested in community welfare 
and well-being. They are the people that we erect monuments to when 
they are dead; the people who forget themselves in their devotion to fine 
purposes and are long remembered by others; the people who are taller 
when they lie down to die than when they stood up alive. 

These are the people who ought to be bunched up in Local Study- 
Clubs in every county and community in North Carolina. Each one of 
them has dreamed his dream alone, cherished his vision in solitude, 
and wearied his soul in lonely endeavors, or has schooled himself to 
silence because of the lack of fellowship in social concerns. Like the 
prophet of old, he has felt at times that he was left alone in the earth, 
innocently unaware of the seven thousand others of his sort. A com¬ 
radeship of fine spirits is needed—the fine spirits among mechanics, 
merchants, and ministers, farmers, bankers, and manufacturers, doctors, 
lawyers, and teachers; such a democratic comradeship as the Rotary 
Clubs illustrate. 

Good fellowship and vague enthusiasm can be made to mean some¬ 
thing of enduring sort in North Carolina if they can be bottomed on 
acute community self-consciousness, competent community self-knowl¬ 
edge, and definite community effort for community weal. 


14 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


The Obstacles 

These are some of the things we talked out with Mr. Connor in his 
office in Raleigh the other day. Why can we not have such clubs? 
Isn’t the time ripe for them? What are the obstacles? he asked. 

In answer we said, The time is ripe, in our opinion, and we can have 
such clubs in a hundred counties—in time. Their organization and 
effective work calls for time. We must begin an active campaigning 
of the idea, but we must possess our souls with patience meanwhile— 
for two reasons: 

In the first place, these are not clubs with hazy purposes, spending 
their energies in effervescent enthusiasm and spontaneous oratory; 
they are study-clubs organized around the definite purpose of investi¬ 
gating and reporting upon community conditions and needs. They are 
research clubs whose business it is to assemble and interpret the facts 
of this or that phase of community life and business, and to submit the 
findings for club discussion with view to constructive or curative effort. 
These clubs would be studying such subjects as—for instance—the 
sources of primary wealth in the town or county, the chance for new 
business enterprises, transportation facilities and freight rates, the 
chamber of commerce—what it is and what it might be, the cost of living, 
thrift and waste, housing conditions and slum quarters, health condi¬ 
tions and public health work, jail and chain-gang problems, juvenile 
courts and reformatories, wholesome community recreation, community 
morals, county government and county affairs, the tax list and tax 
inequalities, school facilities, church and Sunday school development, 
and so on and on. There is enough in any one of these and a hundred 
other similar subjects to keep a Local Study-Club busy a year or so; 
and when a town or county sets about to know itself thoroughly and 
develop itself completely, there is enough ahead to keep it busy for 
many long years. 

When we begin such work we suddenly find that most of us have not 
been bred to first-hand studies of this sort. Instead, we have been bred 
to the study of books mainly. If we have a subject to thresh out and 
can fall back on books we feel fairly comfortable. We pretty well know 
how to absorb knowledge in print and how to sweat the rind of our 
brains somewhat the while; but as a rule we have not been trained to 
go hammer-and-tongs at an actual situation or problem in real life. We 
learn to master life and business, events and affairs—if ever—when we 
have been pitched by the scruff of the neck into the big school of all¬ 
outdoors—into what Emerson called the university of the mobs. We 
have learned to suck books dryer than Stonewall Jackson sucked his 
lemons. Acquaintance with books—the really great books of all time— 
is indispensable, but we also need to learn how to wring final signifi¬ 
cances out of life itself. 








University of North Carolina 


15 


Studies of this sort pursued in this fashion have only rarely been a 
part of our school experiences. Even book courses in the social sciences 
have so far had a minor and for the most part an insignificant place 
in Southern college culture. It was so of old and it is so today. Southern 
genius has always been abundantly able to work at economic and social 
problems, but it has never been trained to do it in any ample measure 
in Southern schools and colleges. The South has always been predis¬ 
posed to politics; we have always been little inclined to economic and 
social studies, in either books or life. 

The Local Study-Clubs are therefore undertaking new subjects in 
new ways. A main difficulty lies in the fact that the ways and methods 
of study are unaccustomed ways and methods. However, the first 
man on a club program who stands the egg on end makes it possible 
for everybody else to do it. 

In the second place, it will take time to develop effective leaders in 
large numbers. The existence, the steady persistence, and the increas¬ 
ing significance of such clubs will depend upon the vision and the 
directive skill of homebred leadership. But already a score or more of 
such leaders are in sight in as many counties of the state. The work 
can easily begin, and it can grow apace as the years go on. Other 
leaders will find themselves or be discovered as the need arises. North 
Carolinians have an undisputed talent for rising to occasions and emer¬ 
gencies in either local or national affairs. 

But can anybody foresee all that it would mean to our developing 
democracy if in a hundred counties study-clubs of this sort were busy 
puzzling out the problems of local life and business, welfare and well¬ 
being, progress and prosperity? It means the folks at school, in vital 
democratic concerns, in every community, busy building a democracy 
that is fit for North Carolina. 

Men of Archibald D. Murphey’s cast of mind and character have never 
been numerous in any state. We have had our full share of them in 
North Carolina. But w r e need more of them, and now more than ever. 
Local Study-Clubs, organized around economic and social purposes, will 
discover and develop them; first for leadership in local communities 
and then for the state at large.—E. C. B. 


II 


THE VITAL STUDY OF A COUNTY 


In prefatory way, I desire to congratulate the State Literary and 
Historical Society upon the rare vision and wisdom of its plan to as¬ 
semble, interpret, and preserve in worthful, literary form the history 
of North Carolina, county by county. 

The consciousness of well characterized group-personality is strong 
in North Carolinians; so strong that it is strange and astonishing to 
people in New England, Minnesota, Illinois, and other states where our 
annual Carolina Day and Community-service Week have so greatly 
challenged attention and comment. It is less strange in California, 
Kansas, Kentucky, or Virginia, where a similar pride in the home state 
has always been an informing force in individual and civic development. 
Love of state is not a childish, trivial something; it is an indispensable 
factor in the building of character. 

Denmark is a conspicuous modern instance of local patriotism as a 
national asset. The thing that most impresses a visitor in the Danish 
Folkschulen is not the agriculture or the home economics, but the local 
folk-lore, the home-bred myth, song, and story, the chronicles of Danish 
heroism, patriotism and achievement that fill the teaching of literature 
and history to overflowing. 

Denmark is recited and sung in every class every day. Her agricul¬ 
ture is wonderful, but her blazing national consciousness goes further 
toward explaining her rise into greatness in the last half-century. Dan¬ 
ish patriotism is not narrowly parochial and provincial. It is intense, 
but it is broadly intelligent. 

The Carolina Day exercises in our schools impress visitors from other 
states in quite the same way. “I am sorry to say there is nothing like 
this in my home state,” said a New Englander in North Carolina on 
the fourth of last December. 

Be it said to the honor of North Carolina, there never was a time 
when a North Carolinian could be a gentleman and be ignorant of the 
history of his mother state. Familiar, loving acquaintance with the 
home county and the home state is a necessary foundation for effective 
citizenship. 

The Rearward Look 

The vital study of a county is the study of what is vital in a county. 
It is a study of the big, main things, the causal, significant, conse¬ 
quential things in community life. Things that are trivial and super¬ 
ficial, incidental and inconsequential have small place in such a study. 
If so be they indicate the characteristic mood, humor, or temper of a 






University of North Carolina 


17 


people, then they have a very large place in an interpretative study; 
but not otherwise. 

First of all, it ought to begin with the rearward look. What the 
county was day before yesterday is related to what it will be day after 
tomorrow. What lasts on and on in any community grows straight out 
of the nature of human nature in that community. 

An understanding of the economic, social, and civic life of a country 
or a county calls for acquaintance with the historical background; with 
origins, racial strains, resources, advantages, obstacles, occupations and 
industries, noteworthy events and achievements, localities and me¬ 
morials, with community-building leaders, with notable, noble person¬ 
ages and their contributions to the industrial or spiritual wealth of 
the county. The field under survey ought not to be cluttered up with 
trifles light as air, however interesting or appealing to family pride. 

A county history now on my desk well illustrates what a county his¬ 
tory ought not to be. It is big and bulky, exhaustive and exhausting. 
It is descriptive merely. It is crowded with trivialties that signify 
nothing; with names and places, items and details that were not worth 
recording, that confuse one’s sense of values, that lead to no conclusions 
large or small. It is occasionally interesting and charming. It is full 
of things curious, fantastic, and bizarre; but hardly worth one’s while 
for instruction or inspiration. It is, I may say, one of the many his¬ 
tories of the New England Berkshires. 

The Roundabout and the Forward Look 

But the vital study of a county also calls for the roundabout and 
the forward look. It is a homespun study of community forces, agen¬ 
cies and influences, tendencies, drifts and movements that have made 
the history we study today and that fatefully are making the history 
our children will be studying tomorrow. 

It is examining the economic and social forces that operate in the 
small, familiar area of the home county. They are forces that have 
something like the steady, fateful pull and power of gravitation or any 
other natural law. They are creating opportunities or obstacles. They 
are making or marring community life. They need to be definitely 
known and to be harnessed for beneficent uses, as we harness electricity 
for traction, light, and warmth. 

It means a study of community resources and their development; of 
populations and occupations; of economic classes and conditions; of 
factors in the production and retention of community wealth; of the 
economic surplus and its relation to the self-sustaining, self-protecting, 
self-elevating abilities of the community; of market and credit condi¬ 
tions; of organization and cooperation;'of facilities for communication 
and transportation; of homes and home conditions; of public health 

2 


18 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


and sanitation; of recreations and amusements; of school, church, and 
Sunday school conditions and problems. 

It is a study of the near, the here, and the now; of the everyday, 
workaday problems of life. Many of them are persistently nagging, 
harrying, and harassing. Every minute of every day they call for 
solution. 

It is not only a vital but a vitalizing study. Intimate, competent 
knowledge of the home community, county, and state means real edu¬ 
cation and culture, stimulation and preparation for effective citizen¬ 
ship. It quickens social conscience and civic courage. 

The right of suffrage—the careless reverie of voting, as Gerald Stanley 
Lee calls it—is not the essence of citizenship; genuine, generous con¬ 
cern about community welfare and well-being is. 

Charles Edgeworth Jones, once upon a time, wrote about The Dead 
Towns of Georgia. It is a significant title. Every state has its dead 
towns and dead counties; dead as Dickens said Mr. Marley was—dead 
as a door nail. Other counties are half-awake, half-asleep, half-alive, 
half-dead. Others are building prosperity upon insecure economic foun¬ 
dations. Others are winning a prosperity that is substantial, safe, and 
abiding. 

Is the home county marking time, moving forward, or lagging toward 
the rear? What are the causes? What are the consequences? What 
are the remedies? What means and measures are worth proposing to 
check decline and decay, or to promote real progress and prosperity? 

The vital study of a county finds answers to these and many more 
questions of similar sort. They are important, worth-while problems, 
and a competent grasp of them makes for efficient social service and 
effective civic effort. 

Compare a county with itself during the last census period, in the 
important concerns of economic and social development, and rank it 
with the other counties of the state, and the results are arresting— 
sometimes startling. But, also, the response makes every social nerve 
tense and taut—that is to say, if the student be capable and worthy of 
real citizenship. 

The Method 

Bulletin No. 9, issued by the Extension Bureau of the University of 
North Carolina, is entitled Home-County Club-Studies. It shows in 
brief, definite detail just how to make a vital study of the home county. 
The County Clubs, and the North Carolina Club at the University, 
are studying the state as a whole, and county by county. They are 
following the outlines of this little bulletin. One county is organizing 
for a still larger survey of its economic and social conditions and 
problems. 




University of North Carolina 


19 


Correspondence courses in home-county studies are offered by the 
University for a trifling registration fee. Extra-campus clubs and in¬ 
dividual students here and there in the state are undertaking these 
studies. 

The vital study of a county leads into a new field of learning. In 
the University of North Carolina the state itself has become a distinct 
curriculum concern, and occupies the entire time and attention of a 
department head. 

The history of the state has always been explored and exploited at 
the University. The work of the new department concerns the economic 
and social puzzles and problems of the state, their causes, consequences, 
and remedies. Together the departments of history, economics, and 
sociology are concentrated upon the rearward, the roundabout, and 
the forward look; upon the North Carolina that was, and is, and is 
to be. 

The vital study of a county will concern county history, but also 
county economics and sociology. Such a study can hardly fail to be 
both vital and vitalizing.—E. C. Branson, an address before the State 
Literary and Historical Association, December, 191 4 . 


m 


VITALIZING SCHOOL ACTIVITIES 


First. The school that is not directly and helpfully related to the 
occupational life out of which it springs and by which it is supported 
is not vital and modern. It is unhinged and out of joint. It is ancient, 
musty, and fusty; befogged, bewildered, and belated. Why should a 
community receive a stone when it asks bread of its school? 

Occupation and bread mean business and life; they signify making a 
living, living a life, and saving a soul. They concern the human and 
the divine necessities and possibilities of our children; the matter of 
their bodies and the fire-mist of their souls—the bread, kingdoms, stars, 
and sky that Emerson sings. So much, to indicate that I do not have 
in mind a crass materialism and nothing more when I recognize the 
imperious, inescapable trinity of food, clothing, and shelter as a primary 
problem for the schools to consider. 

In ways more or less successful, in this large sense, various schools 
are relating themselves to the industrial life of their communities— 
the farm-life schools in North Carolina, the agricultural high schools 
of the various states, the Page County schools in Iowa, the folkschulen 
of Denmark, the schools of Ontario, the John Swaney school in Illinois, 
and similar schools in other states; the schools of Fitchburg and Gary; 
the college of the City of New York, the universities of Cincinnati and 
Pittsburg, the state universities of Wisconsin, Texas, and North Caro¬ 
lina. This, for a brief list. There are many others that deserve men¬ 
tion. The bulletins of the Federal Bureau of Education acquaint you 
with them fully. 

But when listed at length, such schools are few when compared with 
the countless schools of all sorts that are drifting along undisturbed 
by the modern demand that schools be efficient agencies of social adjust¬ 
ment and uplift. Their courses are still formal, abstract, and academic. 
They are still setting their pupils and students down to what Milton 
called an asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles. They still think 
that the further away a thing is in time and space, the better worth 
studying it is. They are serenely unconcerned about the near, the here, 
and the now. 

Second. There is a near-by world of things to be explored; and the 
knowledge gained quickens and makes alive. There is a near-by world 
of opportunities and possibilities, puzzles and problems that challenge 
action, constructive and curative. It is the home-community, the home- 
county, the mother-state. The student who know r s his home com¬ 
munity thoroughly will interpret New York sanely by and by—or the 





University of North Carolina 


21 


Greece and Rome of glory and grandeur. Any acre in Middlesex or 
Manhattan, rightly interpreted and properly regulated, is distinctly 
related to all the provinces of Utopia. Every village experience flashes 
a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of its life 
refer to national crises, says Emerson. 

These community studies concern local geography and history. They 
direct attention to origins, racial strains, noteworthy events and achieve¬ 
ments, historic localities and memorials; to libraries, schools, churches, 
charities, and other organizations and agencies of social uplift; to com¬ 
munity-building leaders and their contributions to the material and 
spiritual wealth of the community. 

But also they concern community resources and their development 
or neglect; populations, occupations and industries; economic classes 
and conditions; the factors in the production, retention of community 
wealth, surplus wealth and its conversion into welfare and well-being; 
market facilities and credit conditions; organization and cooperation, 
civic, social, and commercial; the facilities for communication and 
transportation; public health and sanitation; recreation and amuse¬ 
ments; school, church and Sunday school conditions and problems. 

Here are the forces, agencies, and institutions that are creating oppor¬ 
tunities or obstacles; that are making or marring community destinies. 
And here are direct homespun studies that train for effective citizenship 
and generous social service. 

They are large subjects and they need simplification for immature 
minds. It is our task at the University and yours in the grammar 
schools. 

Third. The task is not simple and easy; but fortunately pioneers 
have been blazing a way for us into this new territory of reality studies. 
For instance, Misses Richey and Kean went over the whole ground for 
city school teachers, and their New Orleans Book has just been adopted 
for use in the New Orleans schools. It can be had from the Maison 
Blanche, Canal and Dauphine Streets, New Orleans, for 95 cents, post¬ 
paid. 

City school teachers will also want to consult the 28 leaflets pub¬ 
lished for the use of pupils in the Newark (New Jersey) schools. Write 
John Cotton Dana, librarian of the public library. 

In selecting and simplifying the particular topics chosen for study 
in your own schools, you ought also to have two University of North 
Carolina Bulletins—No. 9, on Home-County Studies in Economics and 
Sociology, and No. 12, on Home-County Geography and History. 

The following bulletins will guide you in these direct studies of sur¬ 
rounding life: 

The Study of a City in the Schools of that City, John Cotton Dana, 
Newark, N. J. 


22 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


The Social Survey, Russell Sage Foundation, 105 E. 123d St., New 
York. 

What Social Workers Should Know About Their Own Communities, 
Sage Foundation. 

Knowing One’s Own Community, Aronovici, American Unitarian Asso¬ 
ciation, 25 Beacon Street, Boston. 

Teaching Community Civics, Bulletin No. 23, Federal Bureau of 
Education. 

The Georgia Club, a Bulletin of the Federal Education Bureau, No. 
23 (1913). 

Community Studies for Rural High Schools, State Superintendent of 
Schools, Charleston, W. Ya. 

Community Civics, a new book by Jessie Field and Scott Nearing, 
Macmillan Co., New York. 

Community Study for Country Districts, Anna B. Taft, No. 156 Fifth 
Ave., New York. 

The Social Anatomy of An Agricultural Community, C. G. Galpin, 
University of Wisconsin. 

How much there is to know of significant sort about our home com¬ 
munities, and how little we really do know, as a rule, is well exhibited 
in two articles in Rural Manhood, March and April issues, 1915 (125 
E. 28th St., New York). These Social Photographs of Belleville, Kansas, 
were full of surprises for the people. 

Most communities know almost nothing about themselves; that is 
to say, about the things that are fundamentally worth knowing. 

How to use to the best advantage the results of direct community 
studies will appear in the Help-Your-Own-School Suggestions, published 
by the Bureau of Municipal Research, 261 Broadway, New York. 

The titles and addresses have been given in full because a postcard 
will bring most of them to you free of charge; others will cost from 
5 to 15 cents. All are worth having and reading thoughtfully, if you 
essay the task of relating your school work to community conditions 
and needs. 

Fourth. The method I suggest is as follows: (1) choose your range 
of topics, (2) direct the pupils, by treating each topic with a few ques¬ 
tions that can be answered by direct investigation or inquiry, (3) 
assemble their results when submitted in writing and edit them care¬ 
fully for publication in two- or four-page leaflets upon each topic, (4) 
use them for class instruction, and when they are in a final approved 
form publish them as The Raleigh Book, or The Wake County Book, 
or The Greensboro Book, or The New Hanover Book, or whatever the 
title may be according to the locality studied. 

The method is far better than making such leaflets for them as was 
done by Newark authors, or than such a book as was published by the 
two New Orleans teachers. 





University of Uorth Carolina 


23 


It is the method employed in the Winston-Salem schools: it is the 
method of The Home-County Clubs and The North Carolina Club at the 
University. 

Fifth. In addition to the direct study of local conditions and needs, 
there must he vocational activities that will react beneficially upon 
the social life out of which the pupils come and back into which they 
will return. An expert study of occupational surroundings will deter¬ 
mine just what such school activities ought to be. Such a study saved 
Richmond some $200,000 a few years ago. The Gary plan suits Gary. 
The Fitchburg plan suits Fitchburg. Only the Raleigh plan will suit 
Raleigh, and only the Greensboro plan will suit Greensboro. 

In the French schools we found courses in housewifery, drawing, 
light, shade, and color everywhere; but in the goldsmiths’ district of 
Paris we found the tool work and decorative design concentrated upon 
jewelry and gold and silver wares; in the millinery district, the voca¬ 
tional emphasis was laid upon artificial flowers and hat designs—confec¬ 
tions, they called them. In the furniture- and mantle-making quarters 
we found that the vocational activities of the schools were directed to 
developing artistic invention, taste, and skill in these particular trades. 
They were making artists out of artisans, and thereby raising the level 
of the school neighborhood. 

In quite the same way our country schools need to be adjusted to 
country-life surroundings—as they are in Page County, Iowa; but in 
Alleghany or Catawba or Sampson or Beaufort the problem is indi¬ 
vidual and unique in each case. Nothing can be adopted; everything 
can be adapted. The country school problem can be solved by the 
country-minded teacher—the teacher whose soul is saturated with 
country-mindedness—and by no other. 

And the solution will not be found in bread-and-butter studies alone. 
The country school must give the country child a new outlook upon 
country life, its meaning, its possibilities of satisfaction, and its enjoy¬ 
ments. It must lead him, as the Danish schools do, into literature, art, 
and music, as well as teach him the tillage of fields, the care of animals, 
and the laws of markets and credits. 

The little world of the country child may reach no further north 
than the swimming hole, nor further east than the schoolhouse, nor 
further west than the cotton patch, nor further south than the cross¬ 
roads store; but overhead it ought to reach as high as the Milky Way 
and the shining Pleiades. 

The city-born, city-bred teacher has the barest of chances to fall in 
love with country life, to interpret Nature’s myriad voices, and to 
translate her miracle meanings to country-reared children. But city- 
born or country-born, the teacher who solves the country school problem 
will have the taste of sweet-gum buds in her soul.—E. C. Branson, 
address to the State Teachers' Assembly, November, 1915. 


IV 


HOME-STATE STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY 


Country-life studies at the University of North Carolina began in 
September, 1914, under E. C. Branson, head of the Department of Rural 
Economics and Sociology. His assistants have been Mr. S. H. DeVault, 
a graduate of the University, and now in the faculty of the State Agri¬ 
cultural College at Amherst, Mass., and Mr. S. H. Hobbs, Jr., who has 
just gone as a volunteer into the navy. 

The work in the main is concentrated upon an investigation and 
interpretation of economic and social problems in the state at large 
and in detail by counties. 

Phases of the Work 

The phases of it are (1) Formal class courses in Agricultural Eco¬ 
nomics and in Rural Social Problems, each three hours a week through¬ 
out the year, (2) Credit courses consisting of Research Studies and 
Field Work, (3) Unofficial Studies by the State and County Clubs, 
(4) Addresses Afield, averaging 40 a year, (5) the University News 
Letter, which now goes to 15,000 readers weekly the year around, along 
with bulletins and brief circulars on economics and social subjects of 
state-wide interest, and (6) Annual Country-Life conferences during 
the University Summer School session. 

The formal class courses are important because they introduce stu¬ 
dents to a rapidly increasing literature in a new field of college work, 
and because they enable students to set local state and county details 
over against a large background for sane, safe interpretation. But the 
formal class work is in no wise distinctive or especially noteworthy 
beyond the fact that it is intensely focused upon home-state and home- 
county conditions and problems. 

We therefore pass on to consider in brief detail other phases of the 
work which aim at reaching the people beyond our campus walls with 
carefully digested information about North Carolina, and stirring them 
to constructive activity in vital matters of commonwealth concern. 

1. Carolina Studies 

During the last three years 243 subjects of state-wide importance 
have been threshed out in the department headquarters, which are a 
clearing-house of economic and social data about North Carolina. In 
these studies the state has been compared with the other states of the 
Union and ranked accordingly. Each county has been compared with 




University of North Carolina 


25 


all the rest and ranked accordingly; and the results subjected to a 
search for causes, consequences, and remedies. 

A few of the subjects treated in this way may be mentioned to illus¬ 
trate the character and range of these studies: Church Membership 
Ratios, Rural White Illiteracy, Illiteracy Among Cotton Mill Operatives, 
Farm Tenancy, Infant Death Rates, Indoor and Outside Pauperism, 
Homicide Rates, Child Labor, Wage-Earning Women, Local School Sup¬ 
port, Consolidated Country Schools, Country School Teacherages, Boys’ 
Club Work, Home Demonstration Work, Whole-Time County Health 
Officers, University Support, and other social subjects, a hundred or so. 

Economic research has also ranged over wide fields. The studies 
have concerned the production and retention of wealth, and the busi¬ 
ness and social uses of wealth in North Carolina; for instance, The 
Production of Crop Values per acre and per worker, Industrial Enter¬ 
prise, The Wood Pulp Proposition, Imported Food and Feed Supplies, 
Farm Loans and Total Average Interest Rates, Farm Credit Unions, Co¬ 
operative Organization, Per Capita Bank Capital, Resources, Loans and 
Discounts, Bank Account Savings, Per Capita Country Wealth in Farm 
Properties, Per Capita Wealth in All Properties, Per Capita Taxable 
Wealth, The Cost of State and County Governments, County Tax Rates, 
Farm Land Values, Our Idle, Wilderness Acres and Our Landless, 
Homeless Multitudes, Investment in School Properties, Support of 
Public Education, Public Health and Sanitation, Charities and Correc¬ 
tions, and the like. 

This work has been done in the regular credit courses or by volunteers 
in the state and county clubs, and the results have been given to the 
public in bulletins or have been briefed up for the columns of the Uni¬ 
versity News Letter. 

2. The North Carolina Club 

Organization and Methods .—The North Carolina Club was organized 
at the University of North Carolina on September 25, 1914, and has just 
now finished its third year’s work. It meets for an hour upon fort¬ 
nightly Monday evenings. The schedule of studies for the year is 
marked up at its first meeting each fall, and the subjects are promptly 
chosen by volunteers among the members. The studies of the year, a 
score or so, are assigned to definite dates for reports and discussions. 
The students have access to the ample files of information in the head¬ 
quarters of the Club in Room 14 of the Peabody building. Here they 
spend their chance leisure in work upon their subjects—for weeks and 
sometimes for months in advance of their schedule dates. 

What It Is .—The North Carolina Club is an organization composed of 
students and faculty members who are bent upon accurate, intimate 
acquaintance with the Mother-State; with her resources, advantages, 


26 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


opportunities, and achievements, with the production and retention of 
wealth and the conversion of wealth into welfare and well-being, with 
markets and credits, organization and cooperative enterprise, with 
schools and colleges, churches andi Sunday schools, with public health 
and sanitation, with all the problems of urban and rural life—with the 
whole round of conditions, causes and consequences, forces, agencies 
and influences, tendencies, drifts and movements that have made the 
history we study today and that are making the history our children 
will be studying tomorrow. 

A glance at the yearly schedules of study will show that the Club 
is busy with matters of state-wide importance and significance. They 
are homespun studies of everyday puzzles and problems that call for 
competent understanding and wise solution every minute of every day 
in every community in North Carolina. They are studies of the near- 
here-and-now. 

It is a Know-Your-Home-State Club, devoted to the study of economic 
and social problems in North Carolina. It believes that a proper study 
for North Carolinians is North Carolina. It has a worthy, patriotic 
pride in the North Carolina that was day-before-yesterday, but also it 
cherishes a patriotic concern about the North Carolina that is today, 
and that will be day-after-tomorrow. It purposes to develop the round¬ 
about and the forward look as well as the rearward look at the Home 
State. The wonderful story of bygone days in North Carolina has al¬ 
ways had a deservedly large place in University culture. But the 
special endeavor of the North Carolina Club is to probe the quick and 
core of the present moment, and to sound the bottom of the aftertime— 
to use the words of Henry the Fourth. 

All told, 243 economic and social studies of state-wide range have so 
far been completed in the Club headquarters. The students at work 
upon home-county booklets can quickly assemble from the Club files 243 
exact facts about their county, and show its rank among the 100 coun¬ 
ties of the state in 243 important particulars. They quickly see whether 
or not their county is moving forward, marking time, or lagging in the 
rear in essential matters of life and business. These studies are a 
tonic, quickening experience. They are a preparation for competent 
citizenship and effective public service. 

Club Schedules and Year-Books 

The work of the North Carolina Club during the first year of its ex¬ 
istence was concentrated upon North Carolina: Resources, Advantages, 
and Opportunities. The first Club Year-Book (1915-16) gave these 
studies to the public. The chapters are as follows: 

1. Our Mineral Resources. J. H. Allred, Surry County. 




University of North Carolina 


27 


2. Our Timber Resources: Forest and Woodlot. J. H. Lassiter, North¬ 
ampton County. 

3. Our Water Powers: Available and Developed. D. E. Eagle, Iredell 
County. 

4. Our Industrial Development in 1910. H. M. Smith, Henderson 
County. 

5. Our Industries in 191 4 . E. C. Branson, University Faculty. 

6. Our Soils and Seasons. M. H. Randolph, Mecklenburg County. 

7. Diversity of Farm Products in North Carolina. R. E. Price, Ruth¬ 
erford County. 

8. Food and Feed Crops in 1915. Our Six-Year Gains. E. C. Branson, 
University Faculty. 

9. The Crop-Producing Power of Carolina Farms. J. B. Huff, Madison 
County. 

10. The Crop-Producing Power of Carolina Farmers. F. H. Deaton, 
Iredell County. 

11. Per-Acre and Per-WorJcer Crop Production. E. C. Branson, Uni¬ 
versity Faculty. 

12. Livestock Farming in Carolina. D. N. Edwards, Wilkes County. 

13. Cooperative Enterprise in North Carolina. L. P. Gwaltney, Alex¬ 
ander County. 

15. Our Twenty-two Million Wilderness Acres. Lawton Blanton, 
Cleveland County. 

16. Elboio-room for Home Seekers. G. H. Cooper, Rowan County. 

17. Room for New Farm Families in Carolina. E. C. Branson, Uni¬ 
versity Faculty. 

18. Taxation and Home-Ownership. A. O. Joines, Alleghany County. 

19. Our Need for Greater Wealth. R. E. Price, Rutherford County. 

20. A State Publicity Bureau. R. E. Price, Rutherford County. 

21. The Fair: A Means of Stimulation and Publicity. M. H. Randolph, 
Mecklenburg County. 

22. Our Carolina Highlanders: Geographic Conditions and Influences. 
D. N. Edwards, Wilkes County. Economic Status: Agriculture, Indus¬ 
tries, and Education. C. C. Miller, Watauga County. Social Status: 
Classes and Conditions. J. B. Huff, Madison County. 

The second year, 1916-17, the Club was busy puzzling at the problems 
of Wealth and Welfare in the home-state. The inquiries were: (1) 
What are the sources of primary wealth in North Carolina? (2) How 
much wealth, total and per capita, have we been able to accumulate in 
our two and a half centuries of history, and what are the forms of it? 
(3) What business uses are we making of our wealth? (4) What are 
the civic and social uses of wealth in the state? and (5) How does 
North Carolina rank in all these particulars among the states of the 
Union? 


28 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


The second Club Year-Book is now ready for distribution. It will go 
free of charge to anybody in the state who wants it, and for 25 cents to 
anybody outside the state. 

The chapters are as follows: 

1. The Wealth Produced by Carolina Farms. S. H. Hobbs, Jr., Samp¬ 
son County. 

2. Industrial Wealth Created in North Carolina. W. E. Price, Rock¬ 
ingham County. 

3. The Wealth Produced by Our Forests and Woodlots. J. V. Baggett, 
Sampson County. 

4. The Wealth Produced by Our Fisheries , Mines, and Quarries. 
L. H. Hodges, Rockingham County. 

5. The Accumulated Wealth of North Carolina, Total and Per Capita. 
J. E. Kendall, Davidson County. 

6. Factors Involved in the Retention of Farm Wealth in North Caro¬ 
lina. J. A. Capps, Gaston County. 

7. Too Little Livestock in North Carolina. E. C. Branson, University 
Faculty. 

8. Our Industrial Capital: Accumulation and Forms. R. E. Price, 
Rutherford County. 

9. Banking Capital in North Carolina: How Accumulated. Messrs. 
Marion Fowler, Durham County, and S. H. Hobbs, Jr., Sampson County. 

10. Per Capita Bank Capital in North Carolina. T. D. Stokes, Rock¬ 
ingham County. 

11. Per Capita Bank Resources in Carolina Counties. M. H. Ran¬ 
dolph, Mecklenburg County. 

12. Per Capita Bank Loans and Discounts in Carolina Counties. 
A. 0. Joines, Alleghany County. 

13. Bank Account Savings in North Carolina and the United States. 
W. E. Price, Rockingham County. 

14. Thrift in North Carolina. J. K. Holloway, Wake County. 

15. The Wealth on Our Tax Books, Total and Per Capita. H. B. 
Simpson, Union County. 

16. Daybreak in Carolina. E. C. Branson, University Faculty. 

17. Our State Revenues and the Per Capita Cost of State Oovernment. 
S. H. Hobbs, Jr., Sampson County. 

18. State Department Earnings and Expenses in North Carolina. 
R. E. Price, Rutherford County. 

19. The General Property Tax in North Carolina. W. R. Kirkman, 
Guilford County. 

20. What the State Does with the Taxpayer's Dollar. A. 0. Joines, 
Alleghany County. 






University of North Carolina 


29 


21. Aid to Agriculture in North Carolina. J. V. Baggett, Sampson 
County. 

22. Our Investment in Public School Properties. Myron Green, Union 
County. 

23. Our Support of Public Education. H. V. Koontz, Rowan County. 

24. Public Health Work in North Carolina. M. H. Randolph, Meck¬ 
lenburg County. 

25. Charities and Corrections in North Carolina. D. E. Eagle, Iredell 
County. 

3. The County Clubs and Club Bulletins 

Affiliated with the North Carolina Club directly or indirectly are the 
various County Clubs of students. The County Clubs or certain mem¬ 
bers of them are exploring the economic and social problems of their 
home counties. So far, 66 county surveys have been prepared for pub¬ 
lication in the home papers. 

The Sampson County people have published the Sampson County 
studies in pamphlet form for text-book use by students in the high 
schools, by the teachers in the county institutes, and for thoughtful 
reading by the farmers, ministers, bankers, and other business people in 
general. 

The fifteen chapters of “Sampson County: Economic and Social” fol¬ 
low the usual outline of county studies, as follows: (1) The Historical 
Background, (2) Timber Resources, (3) Mineral Resources, (4) Water- 
Power Resources, (5) Industries and Opportunities, (6) Facts About 
the Folks, (7) Facts About Wealth and Taxation, (8) Facts About the 
Schools, (9) Facts About Farm Conditions, (10) Facts About Farm 
Practices, (11) Facts About Food and Feed Production, (12) The Local 
Market Problem, (13) Where the County Leads, (14) Where the County 
Lags, and (15) The Way Out. 

The Mecklenburg Bulletin, edited by Mr. M. H. Randolph, will soon be 
ready for the printers. Also the Durham County Bulletin by Messrs. 
W. M. Upchurch and Marion Fowler. The expenses of the Durham 
booklet will be borne by Mr. John Sprunt Hill, a devoted alumnus in 
Durham. 

The study of Rutherford County, Economic and Social, by Mr. R. E. 
Price, will be financed by Mr. K. S. Tanner, a generous cotton manufac¬ 
turer ^f Spindale. Some sixty such bulletins can be finally edited for 
publication upon short notice. They wait upon the active interest of 
the people in these particular counties. 

These club studies are breaking into a new field in North Carolina— 
the field of county economics and sociology, and they make a new kind 
of literature about the state in detail. There have been studies in 


30 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


county geography and history heretofore in great abundance every¬ 
where; but studies of county economics and sociology have been few. 

The Club publications already in print are as follows: Home-County 
Club Studies, University Extension Series, No. 9; Country-Life Insti¬ 
tutes, University Extension Series, No. 16; North Carolina Club Year- 
Book, 1915-16, University Extension Series, No. 17; North Carolina Club 
Year-Book, 1916-17, University Extension Series, No. 23; Sampson 
County: Economic and Social; Our Country Church Problem, University 
Circular, No. 1; Our Carolina Highlanders, University Extension Circu¬ 
lar, No. 2; and County Government and County Affairs, University Ex¬ 
tension Circular, No. 3. 

Three other Club studies are ready for the printers: Wealth, Wel¬ 
fare, and Willingness in North Carolina; Illiteracy and Democracy; 
Our Landless, Homeless Multitudes. 

4. Field Work 

Local Market Problems .—The bankers and merchants in the Com¬ 
mercial Clubs of the state have been greatly interested in the 43 inten¬ 
sive studies of Local Market Problems, made by University students 
during the last three years. These studies have covered (1) the local 
demand for food and feed stuffs, the local production, and the short¬ 
age—total and in detail, (2) the bills for imported food supplies, and 
their significance, and (3) the remedies. Prof. E. C. Branson, who has 
been directing these studies by the students, has delivered addresses on 
the Local Market Problem in Elizabeth City, Wilmington, Raleigh, 
Winston-Salem, and Charlotte, and four of these addresses in booklet 
form have been given to the public by local banks and business groups. 

Field Surveys .—“Orange County: Economic and Social” will be pub¬ 
lished at the earliest possible date. This bulletin will give the results 
of six field investigations actively involving the Carolina Club members, 
the Chapel Hill Community Club, the County School Board, and the 
State and Federal authorities—some four hundred people, all told. 
These surveys concern (1) Country Schools, (2) Churches and Sunday 
Schools, (3) Public Health and Sanitation, (4) Farm Homes, (5) Farm 
Practices, and (6) Soils and Soil Resources. Negro Churches and 
Sunday Schools in Orange County, by Rev. Walter Patton, will be 
published by the Country-Life Committee of the Northern Presbyterian 
Home Mission Board. 

“Forsyth County: Economic and Social” is a bulletin based on the 
work of six Forsyth students at the University and three members of 
the University faculty—Dr. C. L. Raper, Dr. L. A. Williams, and Pro¬ 
fessor E. C. Branson. It will be published by a group of business peo¬ 
ple in Winston-Salem as soon as it can be finally edited. 





University of North Carolina 


31 


5. Country-Life Conferences 

Country-Life Conferences have been held at the University during 
the last four summer school sessions; the first in 1914 under the direc¬ 
tion of Dr. Liberty H. Bailey of Cornell. In 1915 the prominent figure 
was Dr. William A. McKeever of the Kansas State University. 

In 1916 a Country-Life Institute of illustrative sort was directed by 
Prof. E. C. Branson, University of North Carolina, the purpose being to 
stimulate the holding of such institutes in country communities 
throughout the state under local ministerial guidance. The attendants 
upon this institute at the University, and registering their interest in 
it, were 232, twenty-one ministers among the number. Two thousand 
Extension Bulletins embodying the plan were published, and the entire 
edition was distributed in six weeks, so great was the demand for it by 
letters sent in from the state at large and from a score or more other 
states. Nine local institutes were held in country communities in 
North Alabama by a single minister. In North Carolina the State 
Community Service Commission has held such institutes in fifteen 
country communities here and there. 

In 1917, the Country-Life Conference held an eight-day session, includ¬ 
ing two Sundays, on which days special addresses on Country Church and 
Sunday School Problems were delivered to large audiences by Dr. Victor 
I. Masters, Prof. E. L. Middleton, and Prof. E. C. Branson. The Home, 
School, and Health Problems of the Countryside were treated by Dr. 
C. J. Galpin of Wisconsin University, Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon, Dr. J. Y. 
Joyner, Dr. Clarence Poe, Dr. W. S. Rankin, and Dr. Taliaferro Clark. 

The attendants registering their interest in the conference num¬ 
bered 274. 

6. The University News Letter 

Fifteen thousand copies of the University News Letter are now 
mailed out weekly the whole year through, to thoughtful people in 
North Carolina who want it and write for it. The increase in this way 
has been 12,500 since November 18, 1914, when the first number was 
issued. 

It is a single sheet, 11x17 inches, printed in five columns on one side 
only. It contains almost no University gossip. Its purpose is not to 
advertise the University, but to keep the public mind busy with vital 
concerns of life and business in our developing democracy. It has 
helped to convince the people of the state that the University is think¬ 
ing not first and most about itself, but first and most about North Caro¬ 
lina. This has always been so, but the people of the state have not 
always known it. 

The News Letter is devoted to the economic, social, and civic prob¬ 
lems of everyday life in North Carolina, to the commonplace concerns of 


32 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


life and business, progress and prosperity, welfare and well-being. 
Best of all our agencies of publicity, it enables us to get across to the 
folks with the intimate studies of North Carolina made in the Depart¬ 
ment of Rural Economics and Sociology and by the students of the State 
and County Clubs. The issue of August 1, for instance, was devoted to 
Our Landless, Homeless Multitudes, showing Town and Country Ten¬ 
ancy by Counties in North Carolina, and the issue of August 8 shows the 
Distribution of Bank Capital in the state on a per capita basis by coun¬ 
ties. And so on and on. 

7. The Civic and Social Mind 

These studies of the state are full of surprises. They are adventures 
in a new field of University learning. They are microscopic studies of 
the economic and social problems of small familiar areas. They are a 
necessary accompaniment of work in general economics and sociology. 

They are informing and stimulating in the highest degree. They 
appeal to patriotic pride and challenge the patriotic will. They afford 
real education, vital culture, and effective training for competent citi¬ 
zenship. They arouse in students an active interest in their home 
communities. They develop a method of direct approach to the details 
of community life and business. They train the power of sane inter¬ 
pretation and constructive action in public enterprise. They prepare 
for leadership. They develop the civic and social mind. They relate 
individual culture to social efficiency—which is the largest purpose of 
modern education—from kindergarten to university .—Federal Education 
Bureau Bulletin. 



V 


STUDIES IN COUNTY GOVERNMENT 


The Jungle 

The least creditable institution in America today, the least efficient 
and most wasteful, the thing the average citizen knows least about, the 
matter most neglected by the colleges of the country, the Dark Conti¬ 
nent of American politics, the Jungle of American Democracy, are some 
of the phrases in common use about County Government as commonly 
found in the 3,200 counties of the United States. 

County Government is without ideals. County officers serve with no 
Manual of Duties, Responsibilities, and Procedures—except in a bare 
half-dozen states. It is a headless affair, uninformed, unregulated, 
irresponsible, and governed by local custom mostly—regardless of law. 

The subject in general is covered by no body of organized informa¬ 
tion; it has developed no science; and no courses on County Govern¬ 
ment are offered by any American college or university—so far as we 
know. 

And so the North Carolina Club at the University of North Carolina 
is this year venturing into this unexplored territory. The purpose of 
the members is competent acquaintance with county affairs and effective 
citizenship in their home communities. 

Huge County Expenses 

In 1913 the cost of county government in North Carolina was nearly 
7 million dollars, or more than twice the cost of state government. 

On the same date the bonded debt piled up by county authorities was 
only a little less than the bonded indebtedness of the state. 

County officers in North Carolina in 1913 spent nearly 900 thousand 
dollars in road building and repairs, 358 thousand dollars in charities, 
hospitals and corrections, 324 thousand dollars in interest payments, 
1022 thousand dollars in courthouse salaries, 200 thousand dollars for 
the protection of persons and property—on courts, jails, chain gangs, 
and the like. 

In 1914 we had 6400 almshouse and outside paupers—inmates of our 
county homes and persons outside, receiving help in small sums 
monthly from the county treasuries; and they are costing $258,500 a 
year—so far as we could ascertain after five months of diligent cor¬ 
respondence with the county registers. Twenty-two counties made only 
partial reports, in round numbers. Five county officers we were never 
able to hear from at all. 


3 



34 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


Strange Unconcern 

County government is a big affair in the United States. The year 
before the World War began it amounted to 385 million dollars, or 
r,bout a third as much as the total expenses of the Federal Government. 

And yet the average citizen knows little or nothing about county 
finances, about the tax list and the amazing inequities and delinquencies 
it discloses everywhere; about what county revenues are spent for, and 
whether they are spent wisely or unwisely, effectively or wastefully. 

The Annual County Balance Sheets required by law and given to the 
public in the county papers year by year in North Carolina are com¬ 
monly unbusinesslike and meaningless. Frequently the County Finan¬ 
cial Exhibits are not published at all, as in some 20 counties of the 
state in 1916. 

Annual Balance Sheets 

Nobody knows how the county stands—not even the county commis- 
sioners, in many instances. Usually there is no exhibit under classi¬ 
fied headings, and so nobody can tell exactly how much is spent for this 
or that purpose—say on paupers, the total number or the per capita 
cost; or on roads, the miles built, the average cost per mile of the 
different kinds of road, the per capita daily cost of convicts, work ani¬ 
mals and the like, and the share of the various townships in the ex¬ 
penditure for roads and bridges during the year. 

The newspaper reports of accounts audited by the commissioners 
from time to time are full of typographical errors. Besides, they are a 
meaningless jumble of dates, names, and amounts that defy classifica¬ 
tion. We know, because for three years we have been trying to ascer¬ 
tain from these data how the tax moneys of one county are applied to 
the various departments of county welfare. 

And, by the way, during these three years the commissioners of this 
county have given to the taxpayers no complete and detailed statement 
of county finances. 

In another county only one annual county exhibit has been given to 
the public in 20 years. In other counties the taxpayers have had to get 
special audits by applying to the courts. And so on and on. 

Undirected Democracy 

We have no Manual of Instruction for County Officers, as in a half 
dozen other states; no standardized forms of statement to indicate how 
reports should be prepared and what they should contain; no uniformity 
in accounting, and no state-wide audit system, as in Indiana and Ohio, 
and less effectively in 20 other states; no Code Book of County Officer 
Fees, Perquisites, Allowances, and the like, as in New York State and 
Indiana. 





University of North Carolina 


35 


Government of the people, by the people, for the people in the coun¬ 
ties of the United States is now a half-billion dollar affair—in North 
Carolina something like an 8-million-dollar matter, and it needs intelli¬ 
gent oversight and direction in order to avoid huge waste. 

Honest and Inefficient 

Our county officers are good men and true. As a rule they are honest 
beyond all question; but are they also trained men of affairs, competent 
to manage the biggest single business in most of the counties of the 
country at large? 

Wherever the business end of county affairs has come under strict 
review and pitiless publicity amazing inefficiencies are disclosed. For 
instance, Alameda County, California, saved $810,000 in one department 
in four years by a searching investigation of county business. In 
Indiana, since 1909, county officers have returned to the county treas¬ 
uries the greater part of $1,600,000 improperly paid them. 

In Lee County, North Carolina, says the Sanford Express, the sheriffs 
from 1912 to 1916 received nearly $1,600 more than the law allowed for 
the collection of taxes—doubtless quite innocently. 

Orange County, for a half year or so, supported two sheriffs—one on 
salary account and the other on a. fee basis as tax collector. 

In Brunswick the county farm is this year supporting the County 
Home, and producing a small balance for the county treasury. In 1914 
the average acreage of the county homes in North Carolina was 150 
acres, but an average of only 40 acres was in use, and the average net 
cost to the counties was around a thousand dollars each—some $95,000 
all told. 

Common County Exhibits 

The law in North Carolina calls for an exhibit of county finances in 
every county each year. In 80 counties last year these exhibits were 
given to the public in the county papers, in a few instances in pamphlet 
form. 

Frequently the newspapers carried these statements piecemeal. Instead 
of giving the entire exhibit in one issue of the paper, a half dozen 
issues or so carried the story of county finances. To get the whole 
report it was necessary to clip from week to week, file away carefully, 
and finally assemble all the parts for study—a tax upon attention that 
the average citizen is not equal to. That kind of thing makes the most 
alert taxpayer throw up his hands and quit. It is a capital way of be¬ 
fuddling the public mind. 

Commonly the typesetting and proofreading, or lack of proofreading, 
sprinkles the columns so thick with all sorts of errors as to make the 
whole thing useless for any purpose whatsoever. 


36 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


In fewer than a dozen counties was there any proper assembling of 
(1) county assets, (2) county indebtedness, (3) county receipts, and 
(4) county expenditures for the various purposes of public welfare. 

The report of the county superintendent of schools is the only exhibit 
that approaches the necessary form, and sometimes the report on roads 
and bridges. Otherwise the exhibit is usually unbusinesslike and 
passes understanding. 

No wonder a country editor was moved to say the other day, “The 
annual county statement in my county is so absurd that I always feel 
like I’m robbing the county when I render a bill for printing it.” But 
the money of the taxpayers will be wasted in this way for many years 
to come unless intelligent citizenship demands a businesslike annual 
statement of county finances. Here is a problem—one among many— 
for Local Study-Clubs to work at. 

Not every county in North Carolina is wasting money in printing 
absurd annual statements—say a baker’s dozen. But how about your 
county? The North Carolina Club would like to hear from thoughtful 
people in every county about this or any other matter that good citizens 
ought to be concerned about. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the North Carolina Club is not in 
anywise interested in partisan politics or local personalities. It is 
interested in our county government, its weaknesses and deficiencies as 
a system, and the ways and means of getting the best results for local 
self-governing communities. 

A Worth-While Exhibit 

We happen to have at hand a hundred copies or so of what strikes us 
as being a really worth-while kind of Financial Exhibit by a board of 
county commissioners. It is in booklet form, 3^x6 inches, and it is 
mailed out yearly to every taxpayer in the county. The reader can 
stick it in his coat pocket and chew on it at his leisure in any sort of 
odd moment. 

It is so compact and simple that a wayfaring man though a fool can 
read it as he runs and get some sense out of it about the money affairs 
of his county. 

He can see the receipts in detail and in toto. Under proper headings 
he finds just how much was spent for various purposes, to whom money 
was paid and what for down to the last cent—the total expense of 
courts, juries, paupers, care and feed of prisoners, bridges, road building 
and repairs by townships, equipments and materials, interest, treas¬ 
urer’s commissions and so on and on. 

He knows the miles of highway built, the average cost per mile, and 
the per capita daily cost of work-animals, convict labor, and hired 
labor. He sees at a glance what the bonded and floating indebtedness 
of the county is. 



University of North Carolina 


37 


Uniform County Accounting 

He has a chance to see where his county stands in its finances. And 
since the same forms of accounting are used year by year, he knows 
whether the commissioners are doing better or worse than former com¬ 
missioners. 

It is easy to see that if every county in a state were using the same 
form of annual exhibit, this or some other, the taxpayers would soon 
begin to know what counties were using public money to the best 
advantage, and what counties were wasting public funds. 

As it is, there is no basis for comparison. In one county convicts 
engaged in road work cost $1.13 a day, in another 95 cents, in another 
$1.73. But we just stumble on these differences here and there; no 
published state report enables us to compare any county with every 
other in the details of county expense. 

County bookkeeping ought to be uniform, and then the people might 
know in every county whether or not their commissioners were getting 
results or getting left. 

But in North Carolina at present nobody is in any position to say 
whether or not the people are getting proper results from the million 
dollars a year the counties are spending on roads, or from the expendi¬ 
tures for any other county purpose. 

We will send this little county booklet to anybody that wants it. 
Drop us a card. It is worth looking at closely. 

Training for Citizenship 

This year the North Carolina Club will be busy (1) hunting down 
the facts about county affairs in North Carolina—so far as such a thing 
is possible, (2) assembling and interpreting the facts about county 
affairs in other states, (3) finding hopeful and possible ways and 
means of improvement and progress in county government in North 
Carolina.—E. C. B. 


COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND COUNTY AFFAIRS 

The 1917-18 schedule of the North Carolina Club at the University of 
North Carolina: A. M. Coates of Johnston County, President; S. H. 
Hobbs, Jr., Sampson County, Secretary, and E. C. Branson, Wake 
County, Chairman of Steering Committee. 

1. The County—Its Origin, Place, and Functions; Conflictions and 
Confusions in Carolila. Dr. J. G. deR. Hamilton, N. C. University 
Faculty. October 1, 1917. 



38 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


2. County Offices—Legal Duties and Courthouse Customs. Judge 
Gilbert T. Stephenson, Winston-Salem. Investigations and reports by 
Club members from the various counties throughout the year. Octo¬ 
ber 15. 

3. County Finances. The Annual Balance Sheet. M. S. Willard, 
Wilmington. Uniform County Accounting. The County Budget. George 
G. Scott, Charlotte. October 29. 

4. The County Tax List. County Equalization of Taxes. Dr. C. L. 
Raper, N. C. University Faculty. Also Research Studies and Reports 
on Two Counties in Detail. Directed by Prof. E. C. Branson, N. C. Uni¬ 
versity Faculty. November 12. 

5. County Fees, Perquisites, and Allowances. E. C. Branson, N. C. 
University Faculty. Research Studies by the Club Members. Directed 
by Prof. E. C. Branson. November 26. 

6. County-Wide School Systems—in New Hanover County and in 
Other States. Washington Catlett, Superintendent New Hanover County 
Schools. County School Supervisors. L. C. Brogden, State Agent Rural 
Schools. State-Aided County High Schools. Dr. N. W. Walker, U. N. C. 
Faculty. December 10. 

7 County-Wide Library Systems—in North Carolina and Other States. 
Dr. L. R. Wilson, U. N. C. Faculty. January 7, 1918. Club Reports on 
County Offices and Customs. 

8. County Health Work — Whole-Time County Health Officers. Dr. 
B. E. Washburn, State Health Board. Public Health Nurses. Dr. L. B. 
McBrayer, Superintendent State Sanatorium for the Tuberculous. 
County Hospitals — in North Carolina and in Other States. January 28. 

9. County Care of Dependents. County Homes and Outside Relief. 
Miss Daisy Denson, Raleigh. County Care of Delinquent Women. 
Dr. A. A. McGeachey, Charlotte. February 11. 

10. County Care of Children. County Reformatories. Juvenile 
Criminals. A. W. McAlister, Greensboro. Dr. H. H. Hart, Sage Founda¬ 
tion, New York City. February 28. 

11. County Jails and Chain Gangs. Roland F. Beasley, Secretary 
State Board of Public Welfare. County Care of Defectives—The Insane, 
The Epileptic, The Feeble-Minded. Dr. Albert Anderson, Superintend¬ 
ent Central Hospital for the Insane. March 11. 

12. County Roads and Bridges. M. S. Willard, Wilmington. W. S. 
Fallis, State Highway Engineer. March 25. 

13. County Farm Demonstration. E. S. Millsaps, Statesville. County 
Home Demonstration. Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon, Raleigh. April 8. 

14. The Short Ballot in County Government. The County Manager 
Plan. County Commission Government. H. S. Gilbertson, Secretary 
National Short Ballot Association. April 22. 


University of North Carolina 


39 


15. Township Organization—in New England and in North Carolina. 
Dr. Clarence Poe, Raleigh. County Boards of Public Welfare. R. F. 
Beasley, Secretary State Board of Public Welfare. May 6. 

16. State-Wide County Officers' Associations. County Taxpayers' Clubs. 
H. S. Gilbertson, New York City. Date to be determined. 

17. The Model County—A Vision of County Democracy in North Caro¬ 
lina —Governor T. W. Bickett. Date to be determined. 

The Burden of Every Address and discussion is (1) Wbat are the 
facts in North Carolina? (2) What in other states? (3) What possi¬ 
bly might be in our state? (4) Suggestions as to ways and means of 
progress. 

The Club Year-Book for 1917-18 will contain four or five page briefs 
of addresses. The speakers will furnish copy for same. The results 
will be a brand new chapter in Political Science. 

Bibliographies and Materials in abundance are already assembled in 
the headquarters of the Club, for the use of speakers and students, 
Drop us a card. 


VI 


A LOCAL TAX-LIST STUDY 


In the fall of every year, in accord with an established custom of the 
North Carolina Club at the University, a little group of students selects 
a newly finished township tax list in a typical county of the state, and 
subjects it to searching analysis. It is a detail of their preparation for 
competent citizenship and effective public service in their home com¬ 
munities. 

The inquiries are: Who pays taxes? Where does the burden of 
taxation lie? Is the burden righteously distributed? What are the 
inequities and iniquities in our tax system or lack of system? What is 
at fault, and who? How can the faults be remedied? How remove tax 
inequalities (1) among individuals within township lines, (2) among 
townships within county lines, and (3) among counties within state 
lines? And so on and on. 

It is a purely impersonal study of a vital civic problem. The Club 
has no more interest in any one tax district than in any other or all 
the rest. It is busy with a typical situation stripped bare to the bone. 
It is in no wise concerned with names and personalities, but with facts 
and their significance. 

This fall the studies were led by Mr. S. H. Hobbs, Jr., of Sampson 
County and Mr. Myron Green of Union County. All we can do within 
the limits of this bulletin is to summarize their tables and charts and 
interpret the results in brief fashion. And this we do in order to blaze 
the way for similar microscopic tax-studies by Local Study-Clubs here 
and there throughout the state. 

If the tax list were being analyzed in this way by a little group of 
intelligent people under the urge of able-bodied citizenship in every 
community of North Carolina every year, we might hope for reasonable 
reforms in our wretched tax situation. We are never likely to get 
under a full headway of steam in this matter until the democratic multi¬ 
tudes know far more than they know at present about the amazing 
injustices that abound in every tax list—no more of them in any one 
county than in any or all of the rest. 

Everybody knows in a vague, general way that something is wrong 
with our tax system—somewhere, somehow; but what everybody does 
not know is what the facts are in concrete, accurate detail. There is 
no cure like publicity for wrongs in a democracy. Give the folks the 
facts, whatever they are, and the folks will do the rest. The tax problem 
is intensely a human-nature problem, and nothing probes human nature 
like publicity. 



University of North Carolina 


41 


But at present nobody knows the facts. That is to say, nobody but 
the tax listers, the registers, and the sheriffs. And they are dumb 
because their official lives depend on silence. 

Aside from The Book, the most important book in any county is the 
Tax List, and it is the one book that the people in general know least 
about. 

But little Local Study-Clubs in North Carolina can dig out the facts 
in every tax list. What the North Carolina Club finds in the particular 
townships that have passed under scrutiny from year to year can be 
found in any township anywhere in the state. What these Club members 
are doing hejpe is exactly what a little group of intelligent people is 
doing in Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau counties, New York State, 
in Cook County, Illinois, and in Alameda County, California. And we 
ought to have little groups of full-statured citizens busy in this way 
in every county in North Carolina. The cumulative effect of such work 
is beyond estimate. 

Mr. R. D. W. Connor, our state historian, Mr. A. M. Coates, the presi¬ 
dent of the North Carolina Club, Mr. D. L. Gore of ,New Hanover, and 
a score or more of our Club correspondents think the time is ripe for 
Local Study-Clubs, busy with this and a hundred other matters of local 
and state-wide importance. Our hope is that this and other club studies 
will lead into large results beyond campus walls in North Carolina. 

What the Tax List Discloses 

An analysis of a 1917 tax list of a typical township in a mid-state 
county of North Carolina: 

1. Population —4,200. Whites outnumber the negroes 2 to 1. 

2. Total Taxables —$2,400,095. 


(1) Negro real estate and personalty.$ 163,108 

(2) White real estate and personalty. 1,736,287 

(3) Corporation real estate and personalty. 500,700 


Real estate and personalty are almost exactly half-and-half. A third 
of the personalty consists of solvent credits. 

3. Total Taxpayers —1,442. They are 34 per cent of the population. 
White taxpayers 1,051; negroes 391. Paying on polls only: whites 77, 
negroes 64. Owning farm land: whites 400, negroes 123. Owning 
town lots: whites 258, negroes 107. 

(1) Two-thirds of the entire population pay no taxes of any sort. 
Three-fifths of the whites and three-fourths of the negroes pay no taxes. 

(2) A tenth of the taxpayers (141) pay on polls only. 

(3) Half of the property taxpayers pay on personalty only. 

(4) Half of the property taxpayers are landowners, owning farm 
land or town lots, or both. 





42 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


(5) Nearly half of the white males liable for poll tax (between 21 
and 50 years of age) are not on the tax list. This fraction represents 
defaulters and exempts on account of war service or poverty. No record 
is kept of these exempts. Two-thirds of the negro polls are defaulters. 

(6) It appears that unless a man has property to pay taxes on he 
does not bother (and is not bothered) to pay on his poll alone. At this 
rate 100,000 polls liable to tax in North Carolina are defaulters or ex¬ 
empts. They represent a loss of state and county revenues of some 
$200,000 a year. 

4. Distribution of Taxables. 

(1) Nearly a fifth of all the taxables (18.7%) is listed by one cor¬ 
poration. 

(2) More than a third (37.3%) of the township taxables is listed by 
514% of the taxpayers. 

(3) More than half of all the taxable property (56%) is owned by 
73 taxpayers (corporate and private). They are 514% of the taxpayers 
and less than 2% of the total population. 

(4) A third (33%) of the tax wealth is owned by about a fourth of 
the taxpayers (2714%). These are the people who list taxables from 
$1,000 to $5,000 each. They are substantial land-owning farmers, for 
the most part. 

(5) The taxables listed by two-thirds (67%) of all property taxpayers 
amount to barely more than a tenth (11%) of the total taxables. These 
are taxpayers who list taxables of $1,000 or less each, and pay on per¬ 
sonalty mainly or solely. 

(6) More than half of all the property taxpayers (51%) own a bare 
twentieth of the township taxables. These are the people who list 
property ranging from $1 to $500 each, consisting of personalty almost 
entirely. 

Nearly two-fifths of them pay on less than $100 worth of property— 
nearly a third of them on less than $50 worth. 

(7) The tabulation is as follows: 

Taxpayers 

(a) One corporation lists from $400,000 to $500,000 

(b) 5 y 2 % ( 72) list from $5,001 to $70,000 each 

(c) 2714 % (354) list from $1,001 to $5,000 each. 

(d) 16 % (203) list from $501 to $1,000 each... 

(e) 51 % (655) list from $1 to $500 each. 

5. Classes of Property Taxpayers —1,385 listing $2,400,095. 

A.—655 listing under $500 each: total $114,162. 


167 from .$ 1 to $ 50 

91 from . 51 to 100 

156 from . 101 to 200 


Per cent of 
Taxables 

18.7 

37.3 

33.0 

6.0 

5.0 















University of North Carolina 43 

99 from .$ 201 to $ 300 

72 from . 301 to 400 

71 from . 401 to 500 

B—203 listing from $501 to $1,000 each: total $147,158. 

63 from .$ 501 to $ 600 

40 from . 601 to 700 

31 from . 701 to 800 

39 from . 801 to 900 

30 from . 901 to 1,000 

C—354 listing from $1,001 to $5,000 each: total $753,891. 

197 from .$ 1,001 to $ 2,000 

89 from . 2,001 to 3,000 

42 from . 3,001 to 4,000 

26 from . 4,001 to 5,000 

D.— 73 listing from $5,001 to $500,000 each: total $1,294,848. 

19 from .$ 5,001 to $ 6,000 

11 from . 6,001 to 7,000 

8 from . 7,001 to 8,000 

6 from . 8,001 to 9,000 

3 from . 9,001 to 10,000 

12 from . 10,000 to 15,000 

4 from . 15,001 to 20,000 

8 from . 20,001 to 50,000 

1 from . 50,001 to 70,000 

1 from .. 400,000 to 500,000 


6. Concentration of Wealth. 

(1) Combining the two groups of largest taxpayers in the preceding 
table—classes C and D—we find that 427 property taxpayers own tax- 
ables amounting to $2,048,739. These are the people that list more than 
$1,000 worth of property each. 

(2) Which is to say, less than a third of the property taxpayers own 
more than four-fifths of the township taxables. 

(3) Or, putting it another way: one-tenth of all the people own more 
than nine-tenths of all the property. 

(4) Here is the statement with which the Federal Commission on 
Industrial Relations startled the country in 1916. 

Whether true or not true of the country at large with its 240 billions 
of wealth, it is true in this little tax district with its 2 y 2 millions. 
Inferentially it is true of the state as a whole, and of all the states. 

One-tenth looks like a fatal, universal ratio. In other words, about 
nine out of every ten people everywhere fall short of the industry, pru- 
























44 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


dential foresight, self-denial, sagacity, and dependableness that are 
necessary to the accumulation of property. Or so it seems. From hand- 
to-mouth seems to be a general rule of life. 

In this particular tax district the matter of property and poverty is 
clearly a personal as well as a social problem. 

7. The Wealthiest Group: whose taxables on the list are $5,000 or 
more each. 

(1) They are not very many—only 73 taxpayers; and they are not 
very rich. One is a corporation listing some $400,000 worth of taxables. 
The richest private taxpayer has less than $70,000 on the tax list. Only 
8 list taxables of more than 20 and less than 50 thousand dollars. 

Only 16 have taxables of more than 10 and less than 20 thousand 
dollars. 

This group is not very rich, as we count wealth—even in North Caro¬ 
lina. Not very rich—on the tax list, at least. 

(2) But they list more taxables than all the rest of the 1,385 property 
taxpayers put together. They own more than half of all the taxables 
of the township and bear more than half of the state and county tax 
burden. 

And they are only five per cent of the poll and property taxpayers 
They are less than 2 per cent of all the people of the township. 

Two of these richest people are negroes. 

These 73 people are retired farmers, merchants, bankers, money 
lenders, manufacturers, and professional people. 

They own less than a seventh of the farm land (14%), but more than 
half or 51 per cent of the township real estate values—in town property 
mostly, more than half of the total taxables (51%), nearly two-thirds 
of the personal property (66%), and nearly three-fourths of the solvent 
credits (72%). 

(3) Manifestly they have pared down their taxables to a minimum, 
but evidently not more than the small taxpayers in the township, the 
county, or the rest of the state. 

(4) Clearly, dodging taxes is not a peculiar infirmity of the rich 
alone; it is the ingrained habit of poor and rich alike in North Carolina. 

What we hid out from the sheriffs in 1913 was a cool billion dollars 
worth of property. Our estimated actual wealth in North Carolina was 
1 billion 800 million dollars (Federal Census Bulletin); our aggregate 
taxables were only 800 millions (State Corporation Commission); the 
difference was one billion dollars. This is the wealth we solemnly 
swore we didn’t have in North Carolina in 1913. 

(5) And there we are—in North Carolina! No wonder we lag behind 
in our support of popular education! No wonder our civic enterprises 
are on a Cheap-John scale. 


University of North Carolina 


45 


Where the Tax Burden Lies 

If three-fifths of the whites and three-fourths of the negroes of all 
ages list no property and pay no taxes of any sort whatsoever, not even 
on polls; if nearly a third of the white polls and more than half the 
negro polls, 21 to 50 years old, do not appear on the tax list at all; if 
a full half of all the property owners list less than $500 worth of tax- 
ables each; if 73 people confess more taxables and pay more taxes than 
all the rest of the 1,385 taxpayers of the township, then it is easy to 
see who bears the bulk of the tax burden. 

Doubtless the small taxpayer finds it harder than the well-to-do to 
pay taxes, and doubtless the rich people of the community dodge taxes 
all they can; but an impersonal investigator is bound to say after look¬ 
ing through a tax list in detail that the small taxpayers in North Caro¬ 
lina are dodging taxes even more than the rich, and individuals more 
than corporations. 

There’s nothing in the way of anybody’s dodging taxes in this state, 
rich or poor. We pay on little property or much property or no property 
at all, about as we please. All told, we are hiding out a full billion 
dollars worth of property in North Carolina—or so we were in 1913, 
as the figures of the Census Bureau and the State Tax Commission 
show. 

Of course, these 73 large taxpayers are giving in just as little property 
and paying just as little taxes as they can! And no wonder, because 
with their taxes pared down to a minimum they still bear more than 
half the entire tax burden. No wonder they balk when three-fifths of 
the whites and three-fourths of the negroes pay nothing to support 
state and county government—not even poll taxes; when 167 or nearly 
an eighth of all the taxpayers pay property taxes ranging from 1 cent 
to 55 cents each, and when the property taxes of nearly a fifth of all the 
taxpayers is less than $1.10 a year. 

Jokes in the Tax List 

If you are a descendant of Joe Miller and have a joke center some¬ 
where in your system, then you want to peep into the tax list in your 
county. They are all alike. No one of them is funnier than the rest. 
As for books of fiction—we write a hundred of them in North Carolina 
every year: they are our County Tax Lists! The trouble is, they are 
never published, and so do not get to the public. Only publicity will 
ever edit our Munchausen volumes properly. 

Here are some of the jokes in the tax returns of the 73 well-to-do 
people in the particular township under review: 

The wealthiest private taxpayer in the township lists household goods 
and utensils, work-stock, vehicles, money, jewelry—all personal prop¬ 
erty whatsoever except solvent credits—at $216. 


46 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


The next wealthiest private taxpayer covers all these properties with 
$105. He’s a farmer and he’s well-to-do, hut his household furniture, 
farm animals, vehicles, implements, and the like, are worth only $105— 
on the tax list. 

Two negroes in the township, worth a little more than $5,000 each, 
give in such personal properties at $200 and $615. In household good3 
they make a better showing than the two richest private taxpayers in 
the township. 

Another large landowner covers his household goods, farm animals, 
farm implements, vehicles, and the like, with $82; another with $457, 
and another with $2,272. The differences lie not so much in the prop¬ 
erties as in the consciences of these big landlords. 

Solvent credits, merchandise, and corporation property omitted, the 
personalties of these 73 well-to-do people—household goods, animals, 
vehicles, implements, jewelry, libraries, musical instruments, money 
and so on—are as follows, and, mind you, these are the richest people 
in the township: 


8 from .$ 0 to $ 100 

9 from . 100 to 200 

3 from . 200 to 300 

5 from . 300 to 400 

7 from . 400 to 500 

10 from . 500 to 750 

2 from . 750 to 1,000 

9 from . 1,000 to 1,500 

3 from . 1,500 to 2,500 

2 from . 2,500 to 5,066 


Eleven of these people are worth from $15,000 to $70,000 on the tax 
books, and seven of them cover all personal properties (except solvent 
credits) with amounts ranging from $0 to $500 each. Two of them give 
in no personalty at all—not even solvent credits. 

Real Estate Jokes 

The hugest jokes of all in our tax system appear in the assessing of 
real estate “at its true value in money when sold in the ordinary man¬ 
ner of sale.” The Machinery Act of the Legislature provides for the 
assessment of farm land, timber, mineral lands, and town lots on this 
basis; we have county and township assessors every four years; but 
nobody assesses any real estate in the particular townships studied by 
the North Carolina Club from year to year—manifestly not! 

Every owner gives in his real estate at any value, high or low, just 
as he pleases; all of it, much or little of it, or none of it, just as he 
pleases; and no tax officer says him nay—manifestly not! 












University of North Carolina 


47 


As a consequence, the real estate values on the tax list in the township 
under scrutiny in 1917 range from 8 to 100 per cent of actual market 
values—from low comedy on part of artful dodgers to high tragedy on 
part of tender consciences—clearly so. 

For instance, the average tax value of farm land in the open country 
on this tax list is $7.89, while the average market value runs around 
$20. The 73 largest taxpayers give in their farm holdings at values 
ranging from $6 to $20 an acre. Thus the burden of state and county 
support falls three or four times as heavily on one acre of farm land as 
on another—on farms lying side by side. 

When we look at suburban farm land, the joke grows in size. Here 
the tax values range from $17 to $2,220 an acre. 

But the most amazing jokes appear in the values put by their owners 
on improved town lots. In the same end of the town we found three 
handsome town properties worth around $15,000 each; the tax values 
were $550, $4,400, $4,950. In another neighborhood, two adjoining 
homes about equal in value were listed at $500 and $3,400; one at about 
50 per cent and the other at about 8 per cent of the actual value. 

So on to the end of the chapter. Jokes of this sort appear without 
number in every tax list so far put under the microscope by the Club. 
They can be found in any township tax list, in any county of the state 
by any Local Study-Club at any time. 

Paying taxes in North Carolina is exactly like putting money into 
the hat when it is passed around in church; everybody puts in much, 
little, or nothing, just as he pleases. 

What Local Study-Clubs Can Do 

Any form of government—any plan or method—that overly tempts 
human nature is bad, said Edmund Burke. Our tax system overly 
tempts human nature, and it is bad—very bad. 

And we have come to feel that it will never be any better until little 
Local Study-Clubs all over the state get busy with its badness in detail, 
and settle down to the impersonal, dispassionate purpose of leading the 
state into the righteousness that exalteth a people. 

It is not conceivable that any honest taxpayer would pay more in a 
reign of tax righteousness in North Carolina. He would undoubtedly 
pay less than now; while many people who now pay taxes on a minimum 
valuation of taxables would be genuinely relived to pay on an honest 
basis, if only everybody else were doing it. 

Properties honestly put on the tax books in this state would im¬ 
mensely increase our moral stamina and our self-respect. Said a tax¬ 
payer only the other day: “I feel dog-mean whenever I give in my 
taxes; but I’m doing as well as the rest and a little better than most. 
The fact is, we’re all rotten bad when it comes to taxes.” 


48 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


And he’s right about it. A substratum of social conscience of this 
sort is fundamentally bad—too bad to linger on indefinitely in North 
Carolina. 

Moreover, it is good sense and good business for a state to show up 
with large tax values and low tax rates. It shows a brisk and lively 
prosperity that is attractive to outside capital and enterprise. 

On the other hand, small tax values along with low tax rates are an 
impossible combination except in static or stagnant communities. A 
Pittsburgh capitalist—interested in water works, gas plants, and street 
railways—said to us some time ago: “I’ve always been shy of North 
Carolina because the report of your State Tax Commission makes the 
state look like Job’s turkey. Our best chance for paying business is in 
prosperous communities that are not afraid of prosperity and the 
visible signs of it.” The saying is worth thinking through. 

On any basis of tax valuations, the essential matter is tax equaliza¬ 
tion. The gross inequalities and injustices that exist at present out¬ 
rage the sense of fairness and rob citizenship of its sense of security. 
Justice and security are so fundamental in civil societies that their 
absence imperils the entire social structure.—E. C. B. 


VII 

PROPERTY VALUES AND TAXES IN RANDOLPH 


In the Asheboro Courier of December 6, 1917, there appeared an ex¬ 
hibit of property values and taxes in Randolph County. It was the 
work of Mr. C. L. Amick, the register of deeds. 

It is so simple, so understandable, and so great a contribution to the 
taxpayers’ knowledge of where tax moneys come from and what they 
go for that we are reproducing it in full in this bulletin; with the hope 
that the registers in all our counties will be moved to give to the public 
similar exhibits year by year. 

It is a kind of information that the folks have a right to expect from 
their county officers. If regularly given in every county in the run of 
the year, it would immensely increase democratic intelligence about 
the most difficult problem of government—the problem of taxables and 
taxes—a problem that needs to be threshed out, down to the last detail 
in North Carolina. 

And here is an intelligent beginning by a competent, alert register 
of deeds—the county official who digests the tax returns of the counties 
year by year. May his tribe increase! 

But also here is a suggestion for Local Study-Clubs. If a tax exhibit 
of the sort that Mr. Amick makes does not occur to the register in this 
or that county, the Club can call on him to make it up and give it to 
the public in the county paper; or the Club itself can dig out the facts 
and shape them up for the public eye. 

A showing of this sort ought to be given to the taxpayers of every 
county every year. It would throw a flood of light upon a fundamental 
public problem. 

And while a Local Club of intelligent citizens is working this par¬ 
ticular exhibit out of the tax list, it will undoubtedly stumble on the 
fact that there are dozens of other tax studies that can be made from 
the data on the tax books. 

For instance: Mr. Amick tabulates the classes of property for the 
county as a whole. The Club can make a similar table for each town¬ 
ship. When average unit values in the different townships—say, land 
per acre, or the various domestic animals per head—are put in deadly 
parallel columns, then the most amazing inequalities appear. The 
average per acre value of land in the different townships will vary 
from a half to three or four times the county average; from 89 cents 
to $17.50, as we found in one county in 1915. Other variations of similar 
sort will be seen in the average value of farm animals—all without 
rhyme or reason. 

And nothing but comparisons on this basis will show the inequalities 
(1) among individuals within township lines, (2) among townships 
within county lines, and (3) among counties within state lines. 


4 



50 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


Local Study-Clubs that concentrate on Tax-List studies will soon 
discover these three forms of tax inequities, and so come closer to the 
fundamental matter in any tax situation—the matter of equalizing the 
tax burden. 

Property Values and Taxes in Randolph 

C. L. Amick, Register of Deeds. 

Feeling sure that the taxpayers of the county would appreciate know¬ 
ing the amount of property listed for taxation in the county, and the 
amount of taxes collectible thereunder, and also the various channels 
through which their taxes pass, at no little time and trouble I have 
compiled the following tables, and herewith beg to submit the same to 
the taxpayers. If they will carefully study them they will more fully 
appreciate the tax proposition and will better understand what goes 
with the taxes they pay every year, and from experience I know that 
all taxpayers would like to know this. I do not remember ever having 
seen the tax proposition laid open to the public in the county before, 
and I expect to have the work that passes through this office open to 
the public at any time, feeling as I do that the office and the county do 
not belong to me, to any one man or any one political party, but rather 
to every taxpayer in the good old county of Randolph. 

As a matter of comparison I am giving a table of the property listed 
in 1916 as well as 1917, in order that you may compare the two years, 
and thereby see whether the county is losing or gaining as time goes on. 


1917 1916 


Description 

Quantity 

Value 

Description 

Quantity 

Value 

Real estate. 


$4,527,208 

Real estate. 


$4,478,658 

Horses . 

3,836 

251,581 

Horses . 

3,873 

263,339 

Mules . 

4,246 

319,297 

Mules . 

4,051 

292,234 

Jacks, etc. 

37 

1,702 

Jacks, etc. 

22 

1,420 

Cattle . 

10,330 

174,249 

Cattle . 

10,204 

150,451 

Hogs . 

11,629 

44,257 

Hogs. 

10,675 

38.389 

Sheep . 

1,400 

1,846 

Sheep . 

1,602 

1,868 

Goats . 

325 

395 

Goats . 

178 

207 

Dogs . 

271 

1,795 

Dogs . 

275 

1,956 

Farming utensils . . 


101,817 

Farming utensils . . 


92,585 

Carriages, etc. 


88,299 

Carriages, etc. 


84,432 

Office furniture, etc. 


2,915 

Office furniture, etc. 

3,439 

Tools of mechanics 


6,457 

Tools of mechanics 


5,648 

Household furniture, etc. . . . 

231,089 

Household furniture 

, etc. .. . 

205,189 

Libraries, etc. 


6,573 

Libraries . 


4,601 

Money on hand . . . 


137,435 

Money on hand . . . 


116,209 

Solvent credits . . . 
Stocks, etc. 


927,024 

8,744 

114,663 

Solvent credits . . . 
Stocks, etc.. 


858,232 

1,340 

74,864 

Automobiles. 


Automobiles. 


Seines, nets, etc. .. 


561 

Seines, nets, etc. . . 


240 

Jewelry, goods, mdse., etc. . . 

240,837 

Jewelry, goods, mdse., etc. . . 

272,123 


Total valuation (exclusive of 
corporations, bank stock, 

etc -) .$ 7,188,654 $ 6,947,424 











































University of North Carolina 


51 


Total amount listed by corporations, bank stock, building 1917 

and loan associations, corporation excess, etc.$ 2,299,779 

Add amount listed by private individuals, as above stated. . 7,188,654 


1916 

$ 2,198,152 
6,947,424 


Making a total assessment of 
Incomes in excess of $1,250 


$ 9,488,433 
39,888 


$ 9,145,576 
25,530 


Total listed for taxes 


9,528,321 $ 9,171,106 


Therefore, working this out at the various rates, as follows, a rate of 
86% cents per hundred assessed valuation on real and personal property 
listed by individuals, 58 5/6 cents on all property listed by corporations, 
building and loan associations, corporation excess and bank stock, $1 
per hundred on excess incomes, $2 on each poll listed, and a special rate 
from 10 to 30 cents on the various local special school districts, Randle- 
man bond, and Liberty school bonds, gives us a total tax, collectible 
by the sheriff, as follows: 


1917 

General state and county .$ 76,108.90 

4531 polls in 1917 and 4393 in 1916 . 9,062.00 

Local special school districts . 9,701.46 

Randleman road bond tax. 2,084.16 

Liberty school bond tax. 680.34 


1916 

$ 73,282.91 
8,786.00 
9,407.98 
1,861.21 
644.61 


Total taxes collectible by sheriff 


$ 97,636.86 


$ 93,982.71 


Now, as I am under the impression that a great many taxpayers think 
that nearly all the taxes collected are used for the general expenses of 
the county (I thought this myself until a few years ago), I therefore 
desire to show by the following what a small amount of the taxes are 
really left, after the various subdivisions are made, for the necessary 
expenses of the county. And it might be well in this connection to state 
that notwithstanding the abnormal conditions caused by the war, the 
high cost of living, and the frightfully high cost of labor and materials, 
while everything else under the sun has advanced from 25 to 100 per 
cent, and while taxes have been raised in a great many of the counties, 
still the commissioners of old Randolph have seen -fit not to raise taxes 
a single particle, but are trying their best to pull through on the same 
old rate, regardless of the excessive prices charged for all material and 
supplies. If you will just consider for one moment what it means to 
take this year practically the same amount as was used last year for 
buying supplies for a convict force, and a county home whose inmates 
number more than twenty, not to mention all the other necessary ex¬ 
penses which have to be met, when the prices of everything to eat and 
wear are twice as high as last year, you can appreciate what a job the 
county commissioners have tackled, and after giving this your careful 
attention for a short while I do not believe you will be quite so impa- 



















52 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


tient about that new road you wanted built or be quite so ready to think 
the commissioners are squandering the people’s money. 

But enough of this. Now to show you the various channels through 
which your taxes go, that are to be collected this year: 

Out of the taxes on real and personal property $20,287.48 goes to state; 
12 cents on each poll, 4,531 listed, makes $543.72 goes to the state; mak¬ 
ing a total tax to the state of $20,831.20. 

Out of all taxes collected, except income, or, in other words, on all 
property listed except incomes, a tax of 22 cents is imposed, which goes 
to the free schools of the county, and $1.50 on each poll goes for the 
same purpose, which makes the following tax this year for county free 
schools: 

Out of all property tax collected, of which goes to free schools, $20,- 
873.74; $1.50 on each poll, 4,531 listed, of which goes to free schools, 
$6,796.50; making a total tax to free schools, $27,670.24. 

On all property listed, except incomes, 18% cents out of the total rate 
of 86% cents on the $100 valuation goes to general county purposes, and 
38 cents out of each poll, for the same purpose, making the following 
for general county purposes: 

Out of all property tax collected, county expense, $17,552.92; 38 cents 
on each poll, county expense, $1,721.78; making a total amount of 
$19,274.70. 

Fifteen cents tax on each $100 valuation, or a total amount of $14,- 
232.10, goes to bridges and roads. 

Three and one-third cents tax on each $100 valuation, or a total 
amount of $3,162.69, goes to courthouse and jail debt. 

You will note that the above various amounts, added to the special 
local school taxes of $9,701.46, and the Randleman road bond tax of 
$2,084.16, and the Liberty school bond tax of $680.34, makes a grand 
total of $97,636.86 taxes collectible this year. 

As stated at the outset, I have gotten this up for the information of 
the taxpayers of the county, and if it proves a source of information or 
help to any one, I shall feel amply repaid for the time and trouble I 
have taken in getting it together. 

Thanking the good people of Randolph for the many favors shown me, 
and trusting that I may be able in time to repay them in like measure, 

^ am > C. L. Amick. 

Asheboro, N. C. 


VIII 


OUR FEE SYSTEM IN NORTH CAROLINA 


What and Why 

It may be said, in general, that in most states county officers are paid 
solely or mainly by fees and commissions allowed by law in the dis¬ 
charge of regular official duties. These are commissions to the sheriff 
for conserving peace, executing court orders, and in North Carolina for 
collecting taxes, to treasurers for safeguarding county revenues and 
paying out county funds, to registers for recording titles, transfers, 
mortgages, and in North Carolina for putting the tax list in order and 
digesting the taxes due, to county court clerks for recording court 
business and rendering other public services for which fees are 
charged—in North Carolina some 75 or so. All told, the tale of fees 
and commissions in this and other states is bewildering in number and 
variety. It takes 35 pages of fine print in Pell’s Revisal of 1908 to 
detail the county office fees collectible in North Carolina. 

Speaking of the fee bill in Pell’s Revisal, a correspondent of the 
Club—a lawyer of eminence and extended experience, says: Our Fee 
and Salary Bill ought to be worked over. One clerk will figure out 
about twice as much as another does, and it is hard to tell which is 
right. I observe that several counties are arranging to suit themselves, 
resulting in perplexity and confusion. The law about witness fees, 
tickets, proofs, etc., is alarmingly confusing. I confess that I am con¬ 
fused every time I go to find out what ought to be in a bill of costs as 
to witnesses. Witnesses are at sea, few of the court officers can agree, 
the lawyer doesn’t know, and even the Supreme Court sometimes re¬ 
verses itself on this little matter of paying witnesses when serving an 
individual or the state, in civil and in criminal cases. One chapter in 
the Revisal with its various sections is modified here, there, and yonder 
by other sections of equal importance and force. 

Here is what Milton would call confusion worse confounded. Which 
being translated means confounded confusion; but it is allowed to go 
on year after year for long years. 

The fee system was the original plan of compensating court and 
county officers in the United States. It placed the burden of expense 
on the parties directly served or most concerned, and lightened the 
tax levy on general property. It offered specific rewards for particular 
services, and stimulated officials to prompt and diligent attention to 
duties. The fees collected were their own. If they charged their 
friends and party supporters less than the law allowed, or chose to 



54 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


charge nothing at all, they were punishing their own pockets, and it 
was nobody else’s business. If the county offices produced enormous 
incomes—why, public office was a private snap, and that, too, was 
nobody eise’s business. This in brief is the type of official mind that 
developed under this system. 

Under primitive conditions the plan worked well, and there is per¬ 
haps no cheaper plan today in small counties, or in sparsely settled 
communities where life is simple, property values small, and court¬ 
house business meager and occasional. There are still many court¬ 
houses in the United States that impress business men as being ren¬ 
dezvous for loafing and gossip, and not as places of business; and it is 
so because the business of some or all the offices is not enough to keep 
the officeholders steadily busy six days of the week the year around as 
business men are busy in their businesses. 

Salaries vs. Fees 

But as counties develop, as populations increase and city life with its 
various activities and enterprises comes into existence, the fee system 
offers rewards out of all proportion to the services rendered in this or 
that office. How disproportionate and excessive such compensations 
have been here and there, the public is beginning to know in only 
recent years. And even now very little is accurately known about the 
volume of fees and commissions in the various county offices, and the 
total in any one county or state. Official fees have so long been a pri¬ 
vate matter and the recording of fees so rare that reticence on the part 
of court and county officers has become instinctive, resistance to pub¬ 
licity ingrained, and exact fee totals almost impossible to determine. 
The auditor who undertakes to check up the fees and commissions that 
have been collected or that should have been and were not collected has 
set himself to a difficult task that calls for rare competency and cour¬ 
age in any state under any kind of law. 

But gradually light is breaking in on this most difficult subject, and 
the public mind here and there is beginning to consider the matter of 
court and county fees. For instance, it was found that the sheriff of 
Fulton County, Georgia, a few years ago was receiving in fees and 
commissions around $60,000 a year. After the expenses of his office 
were paid his net income was some $20,000 a year, which was three or 
four times the salary of the governor of the state. The sheriff of 
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1904 got out of his office $15,000 a year net, 
the treasurer $23,000, and the auditor over $50,000. The sheriff of New 
York County in 1916 was receiving a salary of $12,000 and $60,000 more 
in fees. In Cook County, Illinois, in 1904 it was discovered that in¬ 
terest and commissions in the treasurer’s office amounted to more than 


University of North Carolina 


55 


$500,000 a year, and that the treasurer was getting a net compensation 
of more than $200,000 a year, or about twice as much as the President 
of the United States receives. 

Ohio Starts Investigation in 1902 

By the beginning of the new century the scramble for county offices in 
every state in the Union had become a national spectacle of scandalous 
proportions. Campaign charges and chance gossip about county office 
compensations set the people to looking for crows. The first reports on 
county office fees and commissions that reached the public eye were 
those of the Ohio state auditor in 1903; whereupon the legislature 
promptly put all county officers on a salary basis and turned all fees 
and commissions into the county treasuries. California, Colorado, 
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Kentucky, and New Jersey followed suit in 
rapid succession. 

In Georgia in 1912 the legislature called for sworn quarterly state¬ 
ments from all state and county officials covering fees and extra com¬ 
pensations received, other than stated salaries. The purpose was to 
round up the totals of such fees, as a basis upon which to consider the 
best method of remunerating state and county officials. But it was 
nobody’s business to enforce the law, and so in a few years the officials 
ignoring the law ranged from a fourth to nine-tenths of those required 
to report. However, by applying ratios and averages to the partial 
reports that appear in the 1915 Georgia House Journal, it appears that 
the volume of extra compensations received by court and county officials 
of the state was nearly three million dollars in 1914; a conservative 
estimate makes the total $2,880,000. It is significant that more than a 
million dollars of this amount was collected by stenographers, solicitors, 
and clerks of the city, county, and circuit courts of the state. 

The Yearly Fee Bill in North Carolina, $2,250,000 

Using the Georgia figures as a basis for judging, I estimate that the 
court and county-office fees in North Carolina amount to two and a 
quarter million dollars a year; about a million of this total going to the 
stenographers, solicitors, and clerks of the various courts, city, county, 
and circuit. In the direct reports so far received by the North Carolina 
Club, the fees of the four principal county offices range from $2,600 a 
year in Dare, where no county officer receives as much as a thousand 
dollars, to $43,171 in Guilford, where the fees in 1916 paid the salary of 
the clerk, the register, the sheriff, and the treasurer, the premiums on 
all fidelity bonds, the entire expense of the jail, and left $25,000 for 
roads and schools. It is not extravagant to estimate that the average 
total of county-office fees alone is around $12,500 per county, or $1,250,000 


56 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


a year in North Carolina. And mind you, this estimate omits the fees 
of witnesses, stenographers, and solicitors in the city, county, and cir¬ 
cuit courts of the state. Speaking of court costs, one of our Club cor¬ 
respondents—a distinguished lawyer—says: A poor defendant had 
better go to the penitentiary than to offer to pay the costs and a reason¬ 
able fine. 

Changing From Fees to Salaries in North Carolina 

In 1905 North Carolina began to substitute salaries for fees in com¬ 
pensating courthouse officials, and in that year the legislature placed 
the officials of Guilford, Buncombe, Forsyth, and Mecklenburg on a sal¬ 
ary basis. By 1915 the total of counties on a salary basis was 50, while 
50 remained on a fee basis. 

That is to say, in North Carolina we are feeling our way along inch 
by inch instead of settling the matter of county-office compensation 
suddenly in a wholesale way as in Ohio and seven other states already 
mentioned. And we are probably pursuing the better plan of reform, 
because at least 38 of our counties ought, most likely, to be on a fee 
instead of a salary basis. For instance, in four-fifths of the salary 
counties the aggregate taxes collected for state and county purposes 
amounted to more than $75,000 in 1915. Only nine of these counties 
collected less than this amount; and two of these counties—Caswell and 
Camden—with aggregate taxes of less than $50,000 each, would probably 
get better county government on a fee basis. Brunswick and Jones 
were put on a salary basis in 1913, and perhaps wisely returned to a 
fee basis in 1915. The aggregate tax receipts in both counties are 
small—$58,000 in the first in 1915 and $39,000 in the second. 

On the other hand, 50 counties in 1915 were on a fee basis of compen¬ 
sation for county officers. They lie in three groups. Twenty of these 
counties are in the Tidewater country, scattered from Brunswick to 
Currituck, 10 are a compact group of mid-state counties reaching from 
Chatham to Scotland and westward to Cabarrus and Union, and 20 are 
foothill and mountain counties. In 36 of these counties the aggregate 
taxes from all sources collected for state and county purposes in 1915 
were less than $75,000 each. The total was more in only 14 of them 
And it is safe to say that county officials in these 14 counties ought to 
be on the salary rather than on the fee basis. They are Edgecombe, 
Wilson, Cabarrus, Union, Duplin. Moore. Haywood, Anson, McDowell, 
Chatham, Stokes, Onslow, Stanly, and Martin. That is to say. all 
county officials except coroners and surveyors, and perhaps sheriffs, who 
might best remain on a fee or commission basis in these and most other 
counties of the state. 

So far in North Carolina, counties raising more than $75,000 of taxes 
have gone on the salary basis as a rule, and counties raising less than 




University of North Carolina 57 

that amount of tax revenues have remained on a fee basis, or have 
returned to a fee basis, as Brunswick and Jones. In other words, the 
dividing line between the fee and salary systems seems to be $75,000 of 
tax receipts of all sorts collected and handled for state and county pur¬ 
poses. If the total is greater, the people of a county may well consider the 
salary basis; if less, the change from fees to salaries is a matter of 
doubtful wisdom. 

Two Matters to be Considered 

Two matters to be considered in deciding between fees and salaries 
as a basis of compensation for county offices are cost and efficiency. In 
the counties that collect and handle small totals of tax revenues, the 
fee system yields small compensation for county officers and ill rewards 
competent, faithful public servants, but it relieves property owners of 
the burden of courthouse support. The pay of the county officers in 
fee counties comes from the particular parties directly served or most 
concerned. From the taxpayer’s standpoint, the fee plan reduces taxes 
to a minimum. It is a cheap plan of county government, and it pro¬ 
motes diligent, faithful service because it puts county officers on their 
mettle. What they get they must work for with maximum accommo¬ 
datingness. If they don’t work, or if they are ill-mannered and un¬ 
obliging, they get small rewards or lose their jobs in the next election. 
On the other hand, the meager, precarious incomes of the officers in 
these counties do not attract men of ample qualifications. On the 
whole, however, the men that fill the four principal offices in the fee 
counties are fairly on a level with the electorates they represent. The 
risk in the fee counties is Cheap-John government by cheap-scale men. 
In 36 counties of the state the officeholders now on a fee basis would 
most likely favor the salary plan, while the taxpayers would most 
likely oppose the change because it would increase the tax burden and 
remove a direct incentive to diligent service. Moreover, the salary 
plan would tempt officeholders to be careless in collecting the customary 
fees and turning them over to the county treasury. Or it would put 
them into a position where they could dispense with the collection of 
fees altogether in favoring their friends or in dispensing party favors— 
all without hurt to their guaranteed office incomes. 

Small Compensation in Fee Counties 

In 36 of the counties on a fee basis in North Carolina (counties with 
aggregate taxes less than $75,000 each) the fees and commissions are 
relatively small in volume, being largest in the office of sheriff and 
treasurer. Undoubtedly the sheriffs in these counties earn all the com¬ 
pensation they receive in fees and commissions, and they must be 


58 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


fervent and diligent in business, serving the county, or the net returns 
of their offices fail to be a living wage. 

And the same thing is true of all other officers, unless it be the county 
treasurers, who are likely to be overpaid and underworked. This is so 
clearly evident that 18 of the 50 counties that remain on the fee basis 
in North Carolina have abolished the office of treasurer and turned over 
the business to banks or sheriffs, usually banks. These 18 counties are 
Avery, Brunswick, Chatham, Chowan, Clay, Duplin, Edgecombe, Gates, 
Graham, Jones, Lee, Mitchell, Perquimans, Swain, Union, Washington, 
Wilson, and Yancey. 

I may say in passing that, all told, 42 counties up to 1915 had abol¬ 
ished the office of treasurer, while 13 more had secured the legislative 
right to abolish it. You may be surprised to know that the justices of 
the peace in any county have the right to abolish or restore the office of 
county treasurer under statute law; there is no need to go to the legisla¬ 
ture in this matter. So I am reminded by Prof. A. C. McIntosh of the 
University Law School. (Pell’s Revisal, sec. 1395.) 

The treasurers in 10 of the fee counties whose total revenues in 1915 
ranged from $79,000 to $135,000 are overpaid and underworked, unless 
the county commissioners have greatly reduced the rates for receiving 
and disbursing school moneys and other county funds. These 10 coun¬ 
ties are Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Haywood, Martin, McDowell, Moore, 
and Onslow. 

Expense and Efficiency in Salary Counties 

But expense and efficiency are also problems in the 50 counties that 
are now on a salary basis; and they are problems that ought to chal¬ 
lenge the attention of intelligent citizens. The change from fees to 
salaries was made upon the assumption (1) that the fee and commission 
incomes of the four principal officers—the sheriff, the treasurer, the 
clerk, and the register—were more than a fair compensation, under the 
old plan, for the services rendered, (2) that these officers could be put 
upon reasonable stated salaries, the legal fees collected by them as be¬ 
fore and turned into the county treasuries to offset their salaries, 
(3) that all salaries could be paid out of these county fee funds, (4) that 
considerable balances would be left over to apply to roads, schools, in¬ 
terest on bonds, sinking funds, jail expenses, and the like, and (5) that 
in this way the benefits of county government could be increased with¬ 
out adding to the tax burden. 

In general, it may be said (1) that compensations in our 50 salary 
counties are small—too small to secure, reward, and retain men of the 
highest competency in county offices, (2) that there is manifest laxity 
in collecting customary office fees and turning them into the county 
treasury. As a consequence the county fee funds make small totals in 


University of North Carolina 


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the salary counties, and year by year they grow smaller. Thus in 1916 
the fee total in Buncombe, a salary county, was only $14,740, while in 
Swain, a fee county, it was $8,100; which is strange, considering the 
fact that the aggregate tax revenues of Buncombe were nearly six 
times those of Swain. Buncombe and Guilford are fairly on a parity 
in courthouse business, but the fee fund in Guilford in 1916 was $43,171 
against $14,740 in Buncombe. The fee fund in Bertie was nearly as 
great as that of Buncombe—$12,420 against $14,740. And so on and on. 
Discrepancies and laxities abound in the fee funds of the salary coun¬ 
ties; and manifestly some of these counties have increased the cost while 
lowering the efficiencies of county government under the salary plan. 

The fees of the various offices, if faithfully collected, might easily 
pay the salaries of all the courthouse officers in 48 of our salary coun¬ 
ties and in 10 more counties that are not yet on a salary basis. These 
fee funds might not only pay all salaries, but yield surpluses to apply 
to schools, roads, and other county purposes. The fee funds in a half 
dozen counties are doing all these things; and it could be so in 58 
counties of the state, if—and here comes the rub, human nature con¬ 
sidered—if a practical plan were devised whereby the fees, commis¬ 
sions, and all extra compensations other than stated salaries, collected 
or subject to collection, could be charged against all county officers and 
a statement of the same rendered in accurate detail annually. 

Here we are squarely up against the vital subject of competent audit¬ 
ing of the business details of county offices. 

Auditing County Accounts 

When the counties of North Carolina began to change from the fee to 
the salary basis of compensating county officers it became more or less 
evident that an important matter was the county fee fund out of which 
to pay county salaries without increasing the tax burden. 

As a result, forty-two counties up to 1915 provided auditors or made 
other auditing arrangements. Thirty have established permanent aud¬ 
itors on stated salaries. Seven employ accountants or special auditors 
at certain intervals. Five have created finance committees. One has 
charged the county treasurer with auditing work; and it is the duty of 
these auditors to overhaul the fees and commissions of individual offi¬ 
cers as well as the public funds collected for general purposes. The 
counties with auditing arrangements in 1915 were Alamance, Ashe, 
Beaufort, Bertie, Buncombe, Caswell, Catawba, Cherokee, Cleveland, 
Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Davidson, Durham, Edgecombe, For¬ 
syth, Gaston, Granville, Guilford, Harnett, Henderson, Johnston, Lenoir, 
Madison, Mecklenburg, Mitchell, Nash, New Hanover, Pasquotank, Per¬ 
son, Pitt, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Surry, Vance, 
Wake, Warren, Wayne, and Wilkes. 


60 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


Where the Salary Plan Fails 

I say the necessity of auditing county accounts, including both general 
public funds and the fees and commissions of individual officers, be¬ 
comes more or less evident. The expression seems justified by the fact 
that after diligent inquiry during the last two months we have been 
able to ascertain the fee and commission totals of only 12 counties. 
And so with reason. Auditing general public funds is difficult enough 
in the counties of North Carolina, but checking and accounting for fees 
and commissions collected or subject to collection is well-nigh impossi¬ 
ble in the present order of county affairs in this state. Thirteen of 
our salary counties in 1915 did not even try to do it, for all its im- 
portance. They had no auditors and no auditing arrangements, while 
only 7 of the remaining 37 salary counties were able or willing to fur¬ 
nish the information w r hen called upon. 

Without effective attention to fee funds in the salary counties, these 
funds will eventually dwindle and disappear; and the salary plan will 
result or has already resulted in increasing the cost while decreasing 
the efficiencies of government in forty-odd counties of the state. The 
salary plan is failing to work to the best advantage, and it is failing 
because 13 of the salary counties have no auditors or auditing arrange¬ 
ments, and because of insufficient or incompetent auditing in 30 coun¬ 
ties. The salary plan is achieving its best results in fewer than half- 
dozen counties, so far as we have been able to learn—Guilford. Wake, 
New Hanover, and Forsyth leading in the order named. 

Summary and Conclusions 

1. The fee system of compensating county officers was in vogue in 50 
counties of the state in 1915, and 50 counties were on a salary basis. 

2. The line of division between fee and salary counties seems to be 
$75,000 of aggregate taxes of all sorts collected and handled for state 
and county purposes. All but two of the salary counties are above this 
level. Thirty-six of the fee counties are below; 14 are above it. and 
probably ought to change to the salary plan. 

3. The fee plan of compensation is best under primitive conditions— 
that is, where populations are sparse, wealth small, and courthouse 
business meager and occasional. The plan is cheap. It lightens the 
tax burden. It provides incentive to official activity and accommodat¬ 
ingness. On the other hand, the compensations are small—too small to 
reward first-rate ability in the county offices. The duties of county 
officers do not keep them steadily busy as other business men are busy, 
and the courthouse becomes a rendezvous for loafing, idle gossip, and 
political wire-pulling. 


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4. The salary plan is best in counties where fees and commissions 
rise into totals that make excessive compensation for services rendered— 
as, for instance, in New Hanover, where a few years ago the treasurer 
was getting $5,000 a year, or about as much as the governor of the state 
was receiving. 

5. The salary plan with its guaranteed salaries removes a certain in¬ 
centive to diligence and faithfulness to duties. Thus the sheriff in a 
salary county is tempted to be less concerned than in fee counties about 
collecting all the taxes due. A correspondent from a salary county 
writes: “Our clerk and register are supposed to give all their time to 
their work; and yet one goes to their offices and frequently they are 
not to be found; one calls them over the phone and cannot get in com¬ 
munication with them.” Such are the comments that come up from 
salary counties here and there. 

6. If customary fees and commissions are faithfully collected and 
honestly turned over to the fee funds of the county treasuries, the sal¬ 
ary plan in-the larger counties lays no burden on the taxpayers while 
increasing the benefits of government, say in schools and roads. The 
county office fees and commissions in North Carolina amount to some¬ 
thing like a million and a quarter dollars a year, if they are collected 
according to law. The total is large enough to pay all salaries in at 
least 58 counties of the state, and leave considerable balances to apply 
to schools, roads, jail expenses, interest and sinking funds. These large 
surpluses are being wasted in most of the salary counties. 

7. Under the salary plan the incentive to collect customary fees and 
commissions and to turn them over to county treasuries is removed; 
and consequently the fee funds out of which salaries are supposed to be 
paid are small and steadily tend to be smaller year by year in almost all 
the salary counties. The result is that the salary plan as it operates 
at present in most counties adds to the burdens of the general taxpayer, 
and robs the public of the surpluses accruing under good management. 

8. Good management means, first of all, good bookkeeping in every 
county office, and the competent, courageous auditing of county ac¬ 
counts. Thirteen salary counties have no auditors and no auditing 
arrangements. In 30 other salary counties the auditing is manifestly 
insufficient or incompetent. In these 43 salary counties the fee funds 
are utterly neglected, or are ridiculously small. Manifestly if the sal¬ 
aries of salaried officers do not come out of the fee funds of these coun¬ 
ties, they must come out of the pockets of the taxpayers; wherefore the 
interest that taxpayers have or ought to have in the auditing of county 
accounts and in fee and salary funds. 

9. Locally elected or appointed auditors or auditing committees are 
not usually conditioned for any courageous overhauling of county 
finances. They are embarrassed by local ties and attachments. Compe- 


62 


Local Study-Clubs: Essays at Citizenship 


tent county auditors permanently employed or certified public account¬ 
ants employed at stated intervals are necessary in every county to 
instruct, advise, and counsel courthouse officers in the business details 
of their offices. County officers are usually honest, but also they are 
usually untrained in business affairs. 

10. What is needed in addition is (1) a state-wide plan of uniform 
county accounting, covering the collection and disposal of general public 
funds as well as fees and commissions collected and subject to collec¬ 
tion, and (2) a state auditing officer with a staff of competent field 
agents busy the year around advising, counseling, and checking county 
officers in the handling of public funds. Three states are already oper¬ 
ating successfully under such a plan, and 17 more or less successfully.* 

North Carolina has such a system of expert field agents examining 
the business management of our banks. The examination of county 
office finances could be modeled on our bank examiner plan. 

The experience of other states demonstrates that state-wide auditing of 
county accounts saves instead of wastes money. For instance, between 
1903 and 1912 the Ohio Bureau of Public Accounts disclosed the im¬ 
proper disposal of $3,183,273 of public money in county offices, due to 
ignorance or defiance of the law, and during these ten years secured the 
return of $858,460 of this money to the county treasuries.— E. C. Bran¬ 
son, Address before the North Carolina Club, November 26, 1911. 


SOURCES OF INFORMATION 

Counties on the Salary Basis of Compensating County Offices, Officers 
and Salaries; abstracted from the Public-Local Laws of N. C. Prof. A. C. 
McIntosh, University of N. C. Law School. 

N. C. Counties That Have Abolished the Office of Treasurer, 1905-1915. 
A. B. Andrews, Jr., Raleigh. 

North Carolina Club Correspondents in 96 counties. 

State Tax Commission of N. C., 1916 Report. 

The County. H. S. Gilbertson. 

Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Cities. John A. Fairlie. 


*The 3 states referred to are Indiana, Ohio, and Wyoming; the 17 are Massachu¬ 
setts, Kansas, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico, Arizona, 
Colorado, Oklahoma, Washington, Minnesota, West Virginia, Louisana, California, 
and Michagan.—Gilbertson’s The County, p. 122. 




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COUNTY OFFICE INFORMATION 

(Public-Local Laws of N. C., 1905-1915.) 

Prof. A. C. McIntosh, University Law School 

50 Counties With Offices on a Fee Basis in 1915 

Alexander, Alleghany, Anson, Ashe, Avery, Bladen, Brunswick, Cabar¬ 
rus, Caldwell, Carteret, Chatham, Chowan, Clay, Currituck, Dare, Davie, 
Duplin, Edgecombe, Gates, Graham, Greene, Haywood, Hertford, Hoke, 
Hyde, Jackson, Jones, Lee, Macon, Martin, McDowell, Mitchell, Mont¬ 
gomery, Moore, Onslow, Pamlico, Perquimans, Polk, Scotland, Stanly, 
Stokes, Swain, Transylvania, Tyrrell, Union, Washington, Watauga, 
Wilson, Yadkin, Yancey. 

50 Counties With Offices on a Salary Basis, 1915 

Alamance, Beaufort, Bertie, Buncombe, Burke, Camden, Caswell, Ca¬ 
tawba, Cherokee, Cleveland, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Davidson, 
Durham, Forsyth, Franklin, Gaston, Granville, Guilford, Halifax, Har¬ 
nett, Henderson, Iredell, Johnston, Lenoir, Lincoln, Madison, Mecklen¬ 
burg, Nash, New Hanover, Northampton, Orange, Pasquotank, Pender, 
Person, Pitt, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rockingham, Rowan, 
Rutherford, Sampson, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne, Wilkes. 

41 Counties Abolishing the Office of Treasurer, 1915 

Avery, Bertie, Brunswick, Burke, Camden, Catawba, Cherokee, 
Chowan, Clay, Cleveland, Columbus, Davidson, Duplin, Edgecombe, For¬ 
syth, Gates, Graham, Granville, Harnett, Johnston, Jones, Lee, Lincoln, 
Madison, Mitchell, New Hanover, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perqui¬ 
mans, Person, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson, Swain, Union, Vance, 
Warren, Washington, Wayne, Wilson, Yancey. 

Counties having the legislative right to abolish the office of treasurer 
(13): Anson, Bladen, Carteret, Chatham, Greene, Hoke, Hyde, Martin. 
Montgomery, Moore, Polk, Rowan, Stanly. 

42 Counties With Auditors or Auditing Arrangements, 1915 

Alamance, Ashe, Beaufort, Bertie, Buncombe, Caswell, Catawba, Chero¬ 
kee, Cleveland, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Davidson, Durham, 
Edgecombe, Forsyth, Gaston, Granville, Guilford, Harnett, Henderson, 
Johnston, Lenoir, Madison, Mecklenburg, Mitchell, Nash, New Hanover, 
Pasquotank, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Samp¬ 
son, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne, Wilkes. 


IX 


THE SCHOOLS AND THE NATION-AT-WAR 


1. THE TEACHER’S CHANCE TO SERVE 
Green-Cheese Dwellers 

Washington Irving tells us in his history of Manhattan that the in¬ 
habitants of the Green-Cheese planet once upon a time essayed a journey 
to the earth on hippogriffs. Which is greatly to the credit of the green- 
cheese dwellers in twilight times. The mud-planet was doubtless in 
need of them. 

But isn’t it time that teachers were setting out on a similar journey? 
Isn’t it time we were setting our feet firmly on what Dame Partington 
called terra-cotta? In all its eons of history this old earth was never 
before so near going up in flames; never so greatly in need of fire 
brigades. 

Isn’t it time that teachers ceased to be what the average man properly 
calls mere teachers, innocently or ignorantly aloof from the world of 
men and events and affairs—aside and apart from the tremendous issues 
of a time like this? 

The day is at hand when we need to be the best possible teachers, but 
also to be teacher-citizen-patriots, full-blooded, full-statured citizens 
and patriots as well as teachers. Mere teachers are now neither flesh 
nor fowl nor good red herring. They are neither masculine nor fem¬ 
inine. They belong to the common gender—or the neuter gender, say. 
They are a sort of tertium quid; what George Cram calls the great 
American third sex. 

Shall we always be deficient in the instincts, interests, and activities 
of vital citizenship? Must we forever be dwellers on a remote green- 
cheese planet? Cannot we somehow essay a journey to the earth—now— 
while Russia collapses, and Italy struggles for existence, and Byng 
battles like a Titan on the western front, and Belgium, Servia, Poland, 
and Armenia starve and rot? If not, we shall deserve the full measure 
of scorn that Shaw hurls at us. Those that can, do—and those that 
can’t, teach, said he. 

Green-Cheese Programs 

We have been betrayed into this creed by the programs of the teachers 
in their monthly meetings nowadays—as they appear in the country 
press. 



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Here are two of them—fair samples of the rest, for the most part: 
“The Teacher’s Mastery of the Day’s Work; The Elimination of Un¬ 
necessary Talking in Imparting Instruction; Saving the Voice of the 
Teacher and the Ear of the Child; Creating and Perpetuating an In¬ 
terest in Book Study.” Another program reads: “How to Teach Spell¬ 
ing, How to Teach Penmanship, How to Teach Language.” And so 
on and on. 

Every item of which is important at ordinary times; but all of which 
looks piffling at a time like this. Not a hint in these programs of 
anxiety about the world they live in, no sign of interest in it, or even 
of awareness. It hardly seems possible, at a time like this—such a 
time as the world never saw before and which we pray it may never 
see again! The most tremendous issue that humanity has ever faced 
finds no place in these programs! Think of that! It is almost un¬ 
believable, but so it is—in the world of dominant teacher concerns! 
Or so it seems; 

Half a hundred years hence some dry-as-dust antiquarian will unearth 
one of these programs and wonder what kind of creatures teachers 
were in the year 1917. Did they live in a world at war—the greatest 
war in all history? Were they aware of it, or interested in it, or busy 
doing their part in it? No hint of it here, he’ll say. Setting his spec¬ 
tacles for a closer look, he’ll say, Yes, it must be a green-cheese pro¬ 
gram; how could it be otherwise? 

Oreen-Cheese Teachers 

The other day we hurried across the country in an automobile in 
answer to the call of a County Council of Defense to meet the county 
corps of teachers, to counsel with them about the Hoover food-pledge 
campaign, the registration of women for volunteer war service, and the 
sale of liberty bonds; to arrange definitely for gathering the people 
of every community at the schoolhouses for instruction about the world 
war that is now waging, what it means, and the part they must play 
in it. Barely half the teachers were present. 

Later we went out to one of the schools at the time set for the com¬ 
munity conference upon these vital matters. The teacher had not 
advertised the conference. She was herself absent. Only two people 
were present. The same thing happened at another schoolhouse on the 
same Saturday. The minister who left his study and gave his day to 
this patriotic duty came back home quite chapfallen. No interest among 
the people, he said in his report, because there was no interest and no 
leadership on the part of the teacher. 


5 


00 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


What a chance these teachers are missing to be something more than 
mere teachers! to be citizens and patriots as well as teachers! to do the 
thing that lies at hand for them to do in this great struggle for freedom 
in the world! 

If every teacher in every one of our 325,000 public schoolhouses in 
America were consecratedly busy instructing pupils and people about 
this great World War—about what and why we fight, about the needs 
of our boys and our allies on far-flung battle fronts, about the production 
of food enough for home consumption and surpluses to send abroad, 
about the need for economy of every sort, about liberty bonds and savings 
certificates and war taxes—then we really could hope to reach every one 
of the 22 million homes in the United States with necessary information 
and instruction about critical issues. We could strangle the mis¬ 
chievous misinformation that is commonly current among the masses, 
and we could cure the dull unconcern of vast multitudes that live away 
out on the rim of things, far from the centers of activity. 

Teachers Alone Can Do It 

And the teachers of America can alone render this patriotic service 
of war-time education; nobody else can open the eyes and fire the souls 
of the folks down to the last member of every household. The public 
school is the only civic machinery that reaches every home in the land. 
No other social servant is as close as the teacher to the units of popu¬ 
lation. 

If our teachers of every sort, grade, and rank were awake and alert, 
alive and active, we could speedily cure the chronic infirmity of democ¬ 
racies—indifference and the inability to organize. 

This nation will never be organized from top to bottom, as Germany 
is organized, until the people know far more about this war than they 
know at present. And how can they know unless the teachers teach? 
Not just a few of them, but all of them! And teach not the pupils 
alone, but the people as well in every community of every county in 
the whole country. 

Here is the teacher’s war-time duty. Here is his chance to serve the 
flag. Here is his part in the supreme patriotic effort of America in the 
most critical moment in the history of mankind. If we fail as great- 
minded, great-hearted citizens and patriots in this hour of national 
peril, we are shirkers and slackers unspeakable. We are confessedly 
green-cheese teachers who ought to be banished to the green-cheese 
planet. 

Lessons in patriotism! Not once a year, but once a day till this war 
ends—and daily thereafter until we establish at home the loftiest type 
of democracy our people are capable of. Not lessons for pupils alone 


University of JSTorth Carolina 


67 


but for the folks in every community on every public occasion! Lessons 
of blazing patriotism, with the fervor if not with the eloquence of 
Bickett, Graham, Pou, Pritchard, Bond, Bryant, and all the rest. 

War-Time Programs 

Instead of or along with the usual purposes of teachers’ meetings 
month by month, we might be concentrating upon War-Time topics, 
studies, and discussions. Teachers must not know less, but more— 
much more—than most people about the causes that produced this war 
and the course of war events day by day; and they must think sanely 
and constructively about the world we are to live in when this war is 
over, if they are to be high priests of right reason in their little school¬ 
room and community realms. 

The other day we sat through a dreary high school lesson in history. 
The teacher and pupils were stumbling along through a text-book review 
of The War of 1812. Nobody knew much about that war, but—as it 
presently appeared—they knew even less about The War of 1914-17. 
A musty, fusty, green-cheese bit of teaching! We wondered if there 
really could be much of it in our schoolrooms these days. 

If our half-million public school teachers are to inform the minds 
and inflame the souls of their constituencies—if they are to function 
with the highest possible value to the nation today, they must get busy 
with timely topics. To the makers of programs for teachers’ meetings 
we suggest: 

Forty Timely Topics 

1. What We Fight and Why. 

2. German Kultur and American Democracy. 

3. If Germany Wins—What? 

4. What Our Democracy Is and What It Might be. 

5. The Needs of Our Allies. 

6. What America is Doing to Win the War. 

7. What Our State is Doing to Win the War. 

8. Liberty Bonds: What and Why. 

9. Thrift-Stamps and Savings-Certificates: What They Are and Their 
Significance. 

10. More Home-Produced Food, and Why. 

11. The Hoover Food Pledge Campaign: (1) Its Purposes, (2) Its 
Success or Failure in My Neighborhood, and Why. 

12. Economy in Wheat, Pork, and Sugar, and Why. 

13. America—a Land of Scandalous Waste: Is it so? 

14. The State Council of Defense: What it is and its Activities. 

15. Our County Council of Defense: What it is and its Activities. 

16. The Fuel Administrator: What and Why. 


68 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


17. The Food Administrator: What and Why. 

18. The Red Cross: (1) Brief History, (2) What it is doing today, 
(3) What it is doing in my neighborhood, (4) If nothing, why so? 

19. The Army Y. M. C. A.: (1) The Work it is Doing and the Need 

for it, (2) What it Costs and the Value of its Work, (3) What the State 

Has Contributed, (4) What My County and Neighborhood Have Given 
to it, (5) If nothing, why so? 

20. How the United States is Paying for the War, and Where the 
Burden Lies. 

21. The Home Guard: What and Why. 

22. German Frightfulness in Belgium. 

23. The Story of Armenia. 

24. The Story of Poland. 

25. The Submarine Menace. 

26. The Air-Plane: Achievements and Significance. 

27. The German Spy System. 

28. Pro-German Treachery in America. 

29. Pacifism in America, and its Significance. 

30. Labor Trouble in War Times: (1) in France, (2) in England, 
(3) in America. 

31. The Situation in Russia Today. 

32. The Italian War Front at Present. 

33. The French War Front at Present. 

34. The Eastern Situation. 

35. The Problem of Ships. 

36. The Organization of Industries. 

37. War-Profits and Profiteers. 

38. What the Farmers Can Do to Win the War. 

39. What Women Are Doing to Win the War: (1) in England, (2) 
in France, (3) in the United States, (4) in My Neighborhood. 

40. What I Can Do to Win the War. 

Every teacher ought to have the Literary Digest, Current Opinion, 
Current History, and the Saturday Evening Post—these at the very 
least. With these and the current newspapers of the state and county 
they could be ready (1) for ten-minute talks to the school daily, (2) 
for Friday afternoon programs by the pupils—brief essays on the war, 
declamations from speeches by great men, recitations of patriotic poems 
and so on and on; (3) for topics and discussions in the monthly teachers’ 
meetings, and (4) what is most important of all—for effective enlighten¬ 
ment of the people in general in occasional public gatherings. They 
know too little at present about the war, the greatest war of all time, 
and they must know more if America is to play her part worthily in 
■winning the war and in the days of peace that follow. 


University of North Carolina 


69 


Every issue of the University News Letter is full of the war, and it 
goes free to anybody that writes for it. The University Extension 
Bureau has established a new War Information department. Write 
for what you need in such a program as we have suggested.—E. C. B. 

2. UNIVERSITY LECTURES ON THE WAR 

War Conditions at the Front, Some Aspects of German Psychology, 
Applied Science and the War, The Love of Country, The Responsibili¬ 
ties and Duties of Women in War-Time, The Manufacture of War 
Munitions, Russia the Unknown Factor, Some Economic Results of the 
Great War, What Chemistry Must Do After the War—these are some 
of the lecture topics which will be discussed by members of the Uni¬ 
versity faculty throughout the state. These war lectures are in addition 
to the usual lectures offered by the State University faculty, and repre¬ 
sent a part of the war-time extension work. These single lectures are 
designed chiefly for places that cannot have the extension centers which 
have recently been described in the press of the state. 

Any community can have these addresses by arranging in good time 
for them and by paying the traveling expenses of the chosen speakers. 

Members of the University faculty have chosen special topics upon 
which they are thoroughly informed to present to the people outside 
college walls who may desire lectures on problems of the war. Captain 
J. Stuart Allen is giving four lectures: War Conditions at the Front, 
The Mode of Fighting in the Trenches and Effects of the Attacks, The 
Present Crisis Due to the Present German Power, and Personal Experi¬ 
ences at the Front. Prof. J. M. Booker will discuss Imperial Ideals— 
English and German; Prof. E. C. Branson, Some A. B. C.’s of Democ¬ 
racy; Prof. H. W. Chase will treat certain psychological aspects of the 
War; Prof. Collier Cobb will give illustrated lectures on England, 
France, and Italy; Prof. P. H. Daggett will consider certain scientific 
aspects of the war on literature. 

President Graham has chosen as his lecture topic, The Heart of the 
Great Struggle. Prof. J. G. deR. Hamilton has one lecture on Lafayette 
and another on Democracy in the United States. Prof. C. L. Raper 
will interpret certain economic problems of the war. 

Other members of the faculty who will deliver war-time lectures are 
as follows: 

Prof. Edwin Greenlaw—(1) A Nation’s Life in its Literature; (2) 
Literature and the World Crisis. 

Prof. J. H. Hanford—The Love of Country; a lecture with readings 
on the spirit of patriotism as shown in literature. 

Prof. Archibald Henderson—The Responsibilities and Duties of 
Women in War-Time. 

Prof. G. M. McKie—The War for You and Me. 


70 


Local Study-Clubs : Essays at Citizenship 


Prof. A. H. Patterson—(1) The Manufacture of War Munitions; 
(2) America and War Organization. 

Prof. W. W. Pierson, Jr.— (1) South American Relations Now and 
After the War; (2) Russia the Unknown Factor. 

Prof. H. M. Wagstaff—(1) What the United States Owes to England; 
(2) Some Underlying Causes of the European War. 

Prof. A. H. Wheeler—What Chemistry Must Do After the War. 
Prof. L. A. Williams—(1) Public Education and Democracy; (2) 
The Teacher’s Part in This War; Some Effects of War on Education. 

3. THE SCHOOLS AINI) WAR-SERVICE 

The Extension Bureau of the University of North Carolina is issuing 
for free distribution a series of Leaflets on Patriotism and the War. 
Address requests to the Director of Extension Bureau, Chapel Hill, 
N. C. 

The issues to date are: 

1. War Information Service. 

2. The LaFayette Association. 

3. A Program of University Extension for a Time of War. 

4. Why We Are at War with Germany—I. 

5. Single Lectures on the War. 

6. Why We Are at War with Germany—II. 

7. Patriotism and the School. 

8. Why We Are at War with Germany—III. 

9. What to Read Concerning the War. 

10. Lee. Lincoln, and Washington Anniversaries. 


Extension Series Bulletins 


1. A Professional Library for Teachers in Secondary Schools. 

2. Addresses on Education for Use in Declaiming, Essay Writing, and 

Beading. 

8. Extension Lectures for North Carolina Communities. 

4. Correspondence Courses. 

5. The Initiative and Referendum. 

6. Public Discussion and Debate. (Out of print.) 

7. University Extension. 

8. Co-operative Institutions Among the Farmers of Catawba County. 

9. Syllabus of Home-County Club Studies. 

10. Extension Lectures and Correspondence Courses, 1914-1915. 

11. Ship Subsidies. 

12. The Teaching of County Geography. 

13. Correspondence Courses and Extension Lectures, 1915-1910. 

14. The Enlargement of the Navy. 

15. Third Boad Institute. 

13. Country-Life Institutes. (Out of print.) 

17. The North Carolina Club Tear Book, 1915-1910. 

18. Correspondence Courses and Extension Lectures, 1916-1917. 

19. Government Ownership of Railways. 

20. Fourth Boad Institute. 

21. Measurement of Achievement in the Fundamental Elementary 

School Subjects. 

22. Public Discussion and Debate. (Revised.) 

23. The North Carolina Club Year Book, 1916-1917. 

24. Correspondence Courses and Extension Lectures, 1917-1918. 


Copies of these Bulletins will be sent you or your friends if you will 
address the 


BUREAU OF EXTENSION, 

Chapel Hill, N. C. 




















